


The Job

by Josselin



Series: Laurent Is a Girl [10]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Ancel is kind of a stalker, Consensual Sibling Incest, Laurent is a girl, M/M, Office Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:58:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: “I’m hiring,” the man said, and it took Ancel a minute to process that.“I’m a personal assistant,” Ancel said, just be clear about the type of work the man was looking for.





	1. Chapter 1

Ancel’s hairdresser was named Radel. Radel was a friend. They’d hooked up once, years before, and the best part of their sex had been how Radel had brushed Ancel’s hair out afterward, and so they were much better as hairdresser-client. They had an agreement, where Ancel let Radel do whatever he wanted to his hair, and Radel never did anything crazy, like try to dye it or cut it.

Ancel spent the first part of his appointment letting Radel cluck over his split ends, and then he spent the second half of his appointment telling Radel what an asshole his boss was. 

Radel made sympathetic noises while he turned Ancel around in the chair. Ancel kept talking, louder, while Radel finished the blowout. 

“Do you need any product?” said Radel.

“No,” said Ancel. “I’m probably about to be fired, so I can’t afford it.”

“You have to take proper care of your hair--” Radel looked worried.

“Excuse me--”

Ancel and Radel turned to look at the other salon client who had interrupted them. The man who had been having his hair cut in the next station over handed Ancel a business card. 

Ancel took it automatically, and then looked the man over. He was--attractive. Not Ancel’s type, exactly, but Ancel might be willing to make an exception. He was tall, built. Strong features verging on arrogant. Amazing long hair, blond. 

“I’m hiring,” the man said, and it took Ancel a minute to process that.

“I’m a personal assistant,” Ancel said, just be clear about the type of work the man was looking for.

“I gathered from your conversation,” the man said. He turned back to his own hairdresser, handed him a generous tip, and turned toward the front desk.

Ancel and Radel watched him go. The view from the back was just as good as the view from the front.

Ancel looked down at the card in his hand. Auguste DeVere. The name of a company that meant nothing to Ancel. A phone number and an email address. The card was minimalist and tasteful. 

“He has good hair,” said Radel.

Ancel agreed that was true. “I think he wants to fuck me.”

“It happens,” Radel said. “It might not be that bad.”

Ancel wasn’t sure he agreed with that, but to be fair, being fucked by a pretentious asshole might be better than tolerating his current boss for another week. Ancel spent the rest of the weekend using all of his internet stalking abilities to figure out who Auguste DeVere was, and then on Monday he called the phone number on his card.

His internet stalking wasn’t particularly fruitful. He found the man’s company, which was apparently a prestigious consulting firm. There was a listing for Auguste DeVere on the page listing the partners, which Ancel took to mean he was a big-wig there. The company’s website did include a job listing for an executive assistant, so that checked out.

A local paper included a notice about his high school graduation years ago, which--if Ancel did his math correctly--made him only twenty five, which was only a year older than Ance himself. There was an obituary for noted businessman Aleron DeVere that mentioned Auguste as one of his children, and searching for Aleron DeVere indicated the kind of money that made Auguste seem a promising connection.

Social media was less helpful. If Auguste had any kind of social media accounts he hid them extremely cleverly. 

His phone call went through to Auguste directly--he’d half expected to be intercepted by an assistant--but he supposed Auguste had told him he was hiring. Ancel introduced himself, and reminded Auguste of how they had met. “I’m interested in applying for the executive assistant job you mentioned.”

“Great,” said Auguste. “Can you come in tomorrow? I’ll tell HR.”

“At nine?” Ancel suggested.

Ancel had snuck off to the bathroom on the first floor--where nobody went--to make his phone call, and when he went back up to his desk his boss was standing there with his hand menacingly clicking Ancel’s stapler. Ancel bit his tongue and kept from quitting. He had to at least have another job lined up first, not just an interview.

Tuesday, Ancel called in sick, gave his boss two minutes to rant about how inconvenient his sudden illness was, then coughed and hung up. He put on his best suit and tied his hair back so it was visible--they had met at the salon, after all--but a touch more sedate, and debated earrings before deciding against them.

Auguste’s company’s building was a high-rise downtown. Ancel arrived twenty minutes early. He smiled politely at the receptionist and the security at the front desk. It was always worthwhile to be nice to people who worked at front desks. Ancel had started there. “I have an appointment with Mr. DeVere at 9am.”

They signed him in and one of the receptionists showed him to a small conference room. Ancel eyed the hallway, the decor of the conference room, and the people he passed. His hair attracted some second glances. The office seemed conservative--more than he would have anticipated given Auguste’s appearance.

After a moment, a middle aged woman joined him in the the conference room. 

She introduced herself. “I’m Elaine. From Human Resources. Auguste told me he hired you.”

Ancel sat up a bit straighter. He’d thought he was just here to interview, but if the job was a done deal, he supposed that was no reason to complain. And the presence of a human resources person made it more likely Auguste actually wanted to hire him and not just to fuck him.

“We spoke about the position,” Ancel said.

Elaine tapped her fingers on the table consideringly. “You have an experience as an executive assistant?”

Ancel nodded, and took his resume out of a folder and passed it across the table. 

It was a bit of a stretch to call his current boss an executive, but the asshole self-styled that way. 

“What did he tell you about the position?” 

Ancel was diplomatic. “We met socially; I mentioned I was an executive assistant and he told me he had an open position.”

Elaine gave him another hard look. “The last four assistants quit. In tears. He’s been without an assistant for two months and driving the rest of the company crazy. You’re the first serious candidate we’ve had this week and he just drops a post it on my desk saying he hired someone. I’m just trying to figure out if you know what you’re getting into.”

Ancel clearly had no idea what he was getting into. “I’m ready, Elaine,” he said, leaning in and making sure to convey confidence in his voice. “Mr. DeVere is not crazy.”

Elaine snorted. “He’s definitely crazy.”

Ancel ignored that. “But if you would like me to start right away, I’m going to need a starting bonus to cover not providing notice at my previous job.”

“How much?” 

Ancel had no idea. “A thousand dollars,” he said.

“All right,” Elaine said. Wow. He should have asked for more. She took out her own folder, tucked Ancel’s resume away, and passed him a packet. “This is your employment agreement.”

Ancel spent the entire morning on paperwork and being shown around the company and didn’t even see Auguste. Elaine took him through the employment agreement, tax forms, and signing up for health insurance. His new health insurance was amazing; he might have let Auguste actually fuck him just for the health insurance.

Then she walked him over to IT, where he was given a badge and a computer and an email address and Elaine talked to someone with glasses about insuring that his phone was set up correctly.

Then Elaine took him across the hallway and past a board room and introduced him to a man named Huet. Huet’s best feature was his ankles. Ancel smiled politely. 

“This is Ancel; he’s Auguste’s new assistant,” Elaine said.

“Oh thank god,” said Huet.

Elaine assigned Huet to show Ancel the ropes, and turned him over.

Huet looked Ancel over. “The catering order is just arriving, so now none of us have to take food in to the bitch queen.”

Ancel wasn’t sure what that meant. Huet took him up to reception, where they gathered a box of food. “Why are you ordering from this place?” Ancel said, pointing to the name of the restaurant on the bags. 

“We always order from there,” said Huet.

“Can I suggest an alternative?”

Huet shrugged. They paused with the box of food in front of an office with a closed door. Huet handed Ancel a bag. “This is his.”

“What is it?” Ancel said, looking in the bag.

“Low carb turkey wrap, no mayo,” said Huet. 

“That sounds awful,” said Ancel, but he closed the bag again, and approached Auguste’s door. He knocked.

“Yeah?” 

Ancel opened the door and went in.

Auguste’s office was nice. Spacious, well furnished. The furnishings were modern and in the same style as the rest of the building, but masculine and tasteful. Auguste was sitting at a desk in the middle of the room, looking up from his computer at Ancel at the door. 

Ancel carried his lunch across the office. “I have your lunch.”

“It’s you,” said Auguste.

“Ancel,” Ancel reminded him. “Yes, I started today.” He hoped Auguste wasn’t going to have forgotten he hired him.

“Great,” Auguste said. “Can you deal with this?” he handed Ancel a sheaf of papers. 

Ancel didn’t have any idea what that meant. “Of course.”

Auguste opened the bag with his turkey wrap and sighed. Ancel was definitely going to change their lunch orders a bit.

He left, helped Huet deliver the rest of the food, and then Huet showed him around. Huet introduced him to the travel agent that the company used, and the ladies at reception and how they placed the catering orders, and the messenger service that the company preferred. Huet showed him how to work his phone, and how to take calls from reception and to pass them through to Auguste. If there were people to arrange travel and catering and answer the phone Ancel wasn’t really sure what he was going to spend his day doing, but everyone seemed deeply grateful at the idea that he was going to play some kind of interference.

At the end of the day, Huet left him to organize his desk, which was in an alcove outside Auguste’s office. Ancel arranged his computer and the various office supplies left by whoever had occupied the desk previously, and then he looked at his watch. Five o’clock. He should figure out how he was going to give notice at his other job, he figured. And maybe think about--

Auguste’s office door opened. Auguste blinked when he saw Ancel sitting there.

“How’s it going?” Auguste said.

“Fine, sir,” Ancel said.

Auguste blinked. “You don’t have to call me sir.”

“Mr. DeVere?”

“Auguste is fine.”

“Of course,” said Ancel. “Whatever you prefer.”

“Just don’t gossip as viciously about me to your hairdresser as you did that other guy.”

“Don’t withhold my paycheck if I refuse to blow you in your office,” said Ancel.

Auguste blinked again. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Ancel nodded. “Are you going to be working a while longer? Would you like me to order dinner?”

Auguste and Ancel found a rhythm, and Ancel learned how to negotiate the company, and then how to twist the right people in the company around his little finger, and things went even more smoothly. 

His first few days were filled with people telling him rumors about Auguste. Auguste had made an intern cry. Auguste had murdered an incompetent junior associate and hidden the body. Auguste lectured the cleaning staff about the appropriate way to steam-clean the carpet. Auguste brought in more billings than three other partners combined. 

Almost all of the rumors were work related; he learned almost nothing about Auguste personally, except for that no one knew anything about him personally. He worked all the time; he went out with clients. He seemed to have no hobbies, no friends, no family, no personal life. There was one rumor that one of the previous contract lawyers had run into Auguste at a sex club, but it was roundly dismissed because the previous lawyer had been known for being a liar and everyone had seen Auguste wash his coffee cup three times before refilling it; it was impossible to imagine the guy at a sex club.

Auguste let Ancel into more and more of his life. Ancel booked his travel, made his dinner reservations, ran his clothes to the cleaners, and arranged for flowers on his parents’ graves on the anniversaries of their deaths. 

One day Daniel, the usual delivery guy, was out sick, and their food was delivered by a different person, a guy with amazing long black hair. 

“He has great hair,” Ancel said, admiring. 

Auguste looked over the edge of Ancel’s monitor, considering. “Yes,” he agreed. “I wonder what kind of conditioner he uses.”

“Don’t you just want to pull on it while you fuck him?” Ancel said, half thinking about it and half always trying to make it clear that he was a top. Men always got the wrong impression.

Auguste didn’t agree. He blinked at Ancel. “I’m not gay.”

Ancel actually gaped at him. “What?” His gaydar was never that wrong. He’d met Auguste at a salon! Auguste’s hair! And his opinions about fashion! He couldn’t possibly be straight. Shit, and now Ancel was going to end up in trouble for making an assumption about someone who was actually in the closet. 

“I don’t fuck men,” Auguste clarified.

“Why not?” Ancel was still doing an open-mouthed impression of a goldfish.

Auguste seemed to think that was an amusing question. “His hair is shiny, though,” and he wandered back into his own office.

Ancel was baffled by that. 

He’d been baffled by other things--why Auguste ordered horrible sandwiches (Ancel replaced his order with something better and Auguste seemed much happier), why he let the horrible cleaner ruin his sweaters. Ancel had been able to do so much for Auguste. But this was beyond him. He decided there was nothing he could do and tried to ignore it. At least Auguste wasn’t firing him with some sort of weird straight-guy offended vendetta since Ancel had thought he was gay.

Everyone else seemed to find Auguste hard to read, but he became an open book to Ancel as Ancel got to know him. He could tell when Auguste was tired, or in a good mood, hungry or bored or subtly pleased with himself. Auguste was intensely private but never seemed to actually be hiding anything. So one time when he came in with a bit more pep in his step and Ancel would have guessed he’d gotten laid, Ancel said, “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“Yeah,” Auguste said, taking the stack of paper in his inbox and shuffling through it.

“Go out?” Ancel said.

Auguste hummed an agreement.

“With someone?” said Ancel.

“My friend Damen,” Auguste said. 

Damen sounded like a man’s name. Ancel tucked this bit of intelligence away and started in on work things. “Huet tried to move your meeting to the east boardroom.”

Auguste frowned immediately. “We won’t fit. I don’t want the client squished in there like sardines--”

“I know, I told him it wouldn’t work,” Ancel said, “so you’re still in the main room, but lunch is going to be delivered thirty minutes early.”

A few weeks later, Auguste came in to work in a good mood on a Monday again. “Did you go out with Damen again?” Ancel asked. 

Auguste nodded. “Yeah.”

“Where’d you go?” said Ancel. 

Auguste named a bar uptown. 

“Oh, I haven’t been,” said Ancel. “Nice place?”

Auguste thought it was too crowded--Auguste thought any room with more than one person in it was too crowded, Ancel knew--so Ancel just made sympathetic noises and then turned Auguste on the stack of stuff Ancel needed signed. When Auguste was off, Ancel began a search on social media for anything tagging the bar in question the previous weekend. He found a series of photos, and in the back of one of them, he found Auguste. 

Bingo, he thought, enlarging the photo. Auguste was handing a drink to another man--presumably his friend Damen--and Ancel got to inspect his friend.

First, Damen was definitely a man. Ancel had known his gaydar wasn’t that wrong. But why was Auguste in the closet? And if he was serious enough about being in the closet that he denied being gay in front of Ancel--who was obviously out, wore earrings at work, and had met Auguste at the hair salon--then why wasn’t he more cagey about going out with his “friends”? 

Ancel set that aside for a moment. If Damen was Auguste’s type then that certainly explained why Auguste wasn’t interested in Ancel. Damen was good-looking, which Ancel expected, but not in the way that Ancel would have expected. Ancel would have expected someone as fastidious as Auguste, good looking in a fussy and groomed way. Damen had a natural boyish look to him. He was built, like Auguste, and had tousled dark hair and dark eyes and a friendly smile. Maybe Auguste was into muscles. Or dimples. Or both.

The pattern continued. Auguste would go out every other weekend or so, freely admit when he was going out with Damen and report back on what bars they tried, but then when the partners’ dinner came along, told Ancel determinedly that he would not be taking a date.

Ancel had learned some of Auguste’s oddities. He could deal with all of them. Auguste was crazy about cleanliness, and had some sort of superstition about his parking spot, and he couldn’t deal if he spilled coffee on himself. But Ancel bribed the cleaning staff, got a sign hung to reserve Auguste’s parking spot, and kept an extra suit and clean shirt in his closet in case of a coffee accident. Auguste paid him generously, gave him a lot of interesting work to do beyond just booking his plane tickets, and didn’t expect sexual favors. It was the best job Ancel had ever had. 

The closeted thing was weird, but Ancel could manage that too, and he did, mainly by ignoring it.

Then, Auguste wanted to hire another partner, and lured some genius from another firm across the country to come buy in.

Not all of the partners were thrilled about this--there was a lot of politicking. Ancel loved politicking and he gave Auguste all the most interesting gossip every morning. Even when Auguste was traveling, he called Ancel at least once a day to check in and hear the news.

Anyway, Auguste won, and the new partner was a thing. The new guy was apparently named Berenger. Berenger arrived on a Tuesday. Berenger didn’t have an assistant or anything yet, and Auguste wouldn’t think of the practical things, so Ancel added a lunch order for Berenger and talked to IT about equipping his office and then went in there and made sure they actually did things right.

Auguste came in and stopped to chat as usual. Ancel gave him a mug of coffee. “Berenger’s arriving today.”

“Good,” Auguste said. “Have him get started on the St. Louis account.”

Auguste was in a client meeting, so Ancel had some time free and decided to go introduce himself to the new guy.

He’d heard a lot about how great Berenger was, and how many clients he was supposedly going to be bringing with him, and he’d expected Berenger to be like Herode or something. Old, set in his ways, complaining about how to use his phone, something like that.

Berenger was young--maybe only a couple years older than Auguste, and he was wearing the most appalling brown suit Ancel had ever seen. 

“Oh honey,” Ancel said.

“Excuse me?” said Berenger.

“That suit should be burned,” said Ancel.

“Have we met?” said Berenger.

Ancel introduced himself, still horrified by the suit. “I ordered lunch for you.”

Berenger seemed touched, as though Ancel had maybe cooked the lunch personally, rather than just ticked an extra check mark next to the sandwich row. Ancel didn’t feel like correcting him.


	2. Chapter 2

There was something about Berenger, though. The clothes were bad. But if Ancel imagined him without the clothes--well.

He found himself wandering by Berenger’s office often. He pretended at first that he was helping to check in on a new guy, and then Martine started as Berenger’s assistant, and Ancel pretended he was checking in on Martine and showing her how everything worked. That worked for a few more days. 

Then he had to come up with more extreme excuses. He needed to go on a coffee run and walked the long way past Berenger’s office. He had run out of paperclips and had to go to the supply cabinet by Berenger’s office, and spend a long time bent over and rummaging around one of the supply boxes on the floor. He would make small talk with Berenger in the hall, telling him about the best places for lunch or coffee. Berenger was new to the area; Ancel was only being nice.

Berenger was unfailingly nice. Ancel couldn’t tell if his efforts were working, though, until one time Berenger came by Ancel’s desk. 

“Do you need to see Auguste?” Ancel asked.

“No,” Berenger said, stopping and lingering at Ancel’s desk awkwardly. “Do you know the steakhouse on Third Street?”

Ancel nodded. It was on the list of approved restaurants to take clients--as long as they weren’t vegetarian--but Auguste preferred the sushi place on Third, so he didn’t often choose it. “Yes,” Ancel said. “Do you want me to make you a reservation?”  
“No,” Berenger said, looking more awkward. “I mean, do you like it?”

“It’s on the approved list,” said Ancel. “Auguste has eaten there before--he thinks--”

“What do you think?” said Berenger.

“I--haven’t been,” said Ancel.

“Would you like to go on Friday?”

“Do you need someone to fill out a table?” said Ancel.

“I’m trying to ask you on a date,” said Berenger, blushing a little. 

“Oh!” said Ancel. He’d spent a fair amount of time thinking about peeling Berenger out of his awful suits and fucking him over his desk, but a date seemed surprising somehow. In a charming way.

“I’m sorry,” Berenger said, responding to the prolonged silence. “I don’t mean to make our working relationship awkward for you. Please forget that I said anything--”

“Yes,” Ancel said quickly.

Berenger looked even more uncomfortable. “I’ll go now.”

“I mean yes, to the date,” said Ancel.

Berenger’s eyes widened. “Dating isn’t against company policy,” he said, half a question. “I read the employee handbook--”

“What time?” said Ancel, already thinking about what he wanted to wear, and if he needed to take anything to the cleaners before Friday. 

“Eight?” Berenger said.

“Great,” Ancel said. 

Ancel spent the rest of the week picturing taking Berenger out of his awful suit and taking him apart. Maybe he could rip the suit accidentally as he took it off. Or at least hide it. 

But then, after a perfectly nice dinner, where Ancel had made perfectly nice conversation and even dressed in a relatively subdued fashion (relatively), Berenger drove him home, and when Ancel lingered in the passenger seat, Berenger didn’t even kiss him. Not even a peck on the cheek.

It was a total failure. The only good thing was that Berenger had paid the check, which was only fair since he was the one who had picked such an expensive restaurant to eat at.

Ancel couldn’t figure out how things had gone so wrong. He’d planned for the dinner so carefully, and Berenger’s eyes had been attentively on him all evening, and their conversation had been polite and non-controversial, and Ancel had been so sure that there was sex in his future, and then he got nothing. 

He came to work the next week in a bad mood. Auguste was in a bad mood also--he’d been called back from France because his uncle had been arrested or something. It was the type of thing that would normally make for a very juicy scandal for Ancel to dig into, if he hadn’t been distracted by Berenger’s complete failure to be into him.

Then, to further complicate matters, Berenger asked him out a second time. Very politely, standing in front of his desk in that same horrible brown suit he’d worn the first day Ancel had met him. “I made reservations at Yellowfin?”

That was a very nice sushi restaurant; Ancel had mentioned liking sushi on their first date. 

Ancel had assumed that the complete lack of anything at the end of their first date had meant Berenger wasn’t into him. Maybe Berenger was just--one of those weird gay men who didn’t like sex on the first date? Ancel wasn’t sure. He’d never met any of those before. Maybe Berenger was the first. And he was from Portland. Maybe things were different there. Berenger was still staring at him hopefully. 

“All right,” Ancel said. 

During the second date, Ancel didn’t hold back. He wore his favorite outfit and his favorite brooch, which together could probably only be generously called “gaudy”, and he wore his hair down and some eyeliner. He put his hand on Berenger’s elbow and let Berenger lead him to their table and told outrageous stories the whole evening and fed Berenger a plate of fruit for dessert. Berenger even starting laughing himself, more quietly than Ancel, but he was clearly enjoying himself. 

It couldn’t have gone better, Ancel told himself as they walked out to Berenger’s car. 

In the car, Ancel suggested, “Your place?” because he figured Berenger’s place was nicer than his place, which still featured a rainbow flag on the wall from when he had been in college and a purple hanging beaded thing in the doorway to the bedroom. 

Berenger’s eyes widened, and Ancel felt certain that he saw a moment of desire in his eyes, but then, Berenger declined. Said he should take Ancel home.

Ancel didn’t understand where things had gone so wrong. He was quiet during the drive, half pouting and half shocked, and when Berenger dropped him off he was so miffed he didn’t even bother to linger for a possible kiss, just got out of the car and let Berenger look longingly at his ass as he went inside.

The man was infuriating. Ancel fumed through the rest of the weekend, jerked off petulantly, and was still in a bad mood when he went back into work the following week. Berenger got sent off to France for a week because Auguste couldn’t go, which left Auguste and Ancel both in the office while Auguste had nothing to do except try to backseat drive meetings in a different time zone, and both of them ended up in a terrible mood. 

When Berenger came back from France, he started lurking around Ancel’s desk again, which kind of irked Ancel further, and then after a week or so he asked Ancel out to dinner a third time that weekend.

Ancel was thoroughly disgusted. “I have other plans,” he said. 

Berenger looked disappointed. Ancel just held his gaze until he left for his own office.

Auguste came out of his office, scowling. He eyed the closing door to Berenger’s office. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“I’m going home,” Ancel announced. “It’s Friday and late enough that happy hour is over, you’re on your own.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Auguste. 

“I hope you’re going back to France next week,” Ancel continued. 

“Yeah,” Auguste said. “My friend is going to watch my sister.”

“Good,” said Ancel, and then that thought caught up with him. What friend? Auguste had friends? “What friend?”

Auguste glanced over. “Oh, Damen.” 

Ancel couldn’t stop his eyebrows from doing something interesting that was probably unattractive.

Auguste blinked at him. 

“I didn’t realize--” said Ancel, and then he realized he had no idea where he was going with that. --that Auguste had friends? --that Damen was more than a casual hookup? “I’m leaving,” he repeated.

He grabbed his stuff and left as Auguste was heading toward Berenger’s door.

Work was much nicer while Auguste was in France, but Berenger was keeping his distance. Ancel had decided that if Berenger asked him out again, he was going to flat out ask if Berenger was asexual before he agreed. Berenger should be up front about his intentions. 

But Berenger didn’t ask him out again. He eyed Ancel at his desk from across the atrium when he came out of his own office, but he never ventured closer to Ancel’s desk than the main hallway. 

There was a client dinner that weekend. 

“Are you going to bring anyone?” Ancel asked Auguste, wondering if Damen’s name might come up again.

“No,” Auguste said. “You?”

“I’m only there to make sure the caterer doesn’t screw up again, it’s hardly a date event.”

“You could bring a date,” said Auguste, blinking.

“Do you want chicken or fish?” Ancel said.

“What kind of fish?” said Auguste.

“Mahi-mahi.”

“Isn’t that like a dolphin? Are we supposed to eat it?”

“It’s expensive,” Ancel offered. 

“Can you look up if it’s okay to eat?”

“I’m sure the caterer--”

“I mean, morally,” said Auguste.

Ancel rolled his eyes. “I’ll put you down for chicken. Or do you have moral objections--”

Ancel ate the mahi mahi. Ancel didn’t have much to do. He intercepted a waiter and told him to only fill Herode’s drink with sparkling water, threatened the head caterer personally that if they screwed up the meal he was rescinding their annual contract, and then he fixed half of the floral arrangements so they didn’t look so obscene.

After the meal, Ancel was thinking about leaving, when he was cornered by Harrison near the bar. Harrison rested a heavy arm over Ancel’s shoulders, and Ancel tried to squirm away without looking obvious.

“Andrew!” Harrison said, liquor heavy on his breath. 

“Ancel,” Ancel corrected.

“My favorite redhead!”

“Sir, let me get you another drink.”

“Let’s take it somewhere more private,” Harrison said. 

“Oh,” Ancel said brightly. “But the view from the bar here is so nice.”

Harrison leered at him. “We can take the view with us.”

Ancel reminded himself that Harrison was the CEO of a 300 million dollar account. 

“I’m here with a date,” Ancel said, desperately looking for an excuse. He glanced around the room to see if Auguste was around to help extricate him from this situation elegantly. Auguste had a magical way with people, somehow.

“He shouldn’t have left you all alone,” Harrison said. “Doesn’t know how to treat you, clearly.”

Ancel didn’t see Auguste, but Berenger was a few feet away. Ancel cursed his luck, but took the only life preserver he saw within reach. 

“Berenger,” he said, sliding out from under Harrison’s arm to draw Berenger over. “Let me introduce you to--”

“We’ve met,” Berenger said, shaking Harrison’s hand. “Good to see you again--”

Ancel kept hold of Berenger’s other arm. He leaned in to Berenger’s ear. “Play along,” he said, and then he kissed Berenger’s cheek possessively and said, “Darling, why did you leave me all alone here at the bar! Harrison was just commenting I looked lonely.”

Berenger looked over at Ancel, back at Harrison, and back over to Ancel. _Play along,_ Ancel encouraged with his eyes. Berenger patted Ancel’s hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry about that.”

Ancel batted his eyes at Berenger. “Make it up to me by getting me some dessert?”

“Of course,” Berenger said, turning to Harrison. “Excuse us?”

Harrison looked grouchy but Ancel led them across the room toward the dessert table anyway. He glanced back. Harrison was still eyeing them.

“He’s watching,” Ancel hissed, and then leaned in toward Berenger and kissed him. 

He could see Berenger’s eyes widen, then close as their lips met.

It should have been a terrible kiss. They were in the middle of a ballroom, surrounded by their coworkers. A stupid song was playing. He’d taken Berenger by surprise. Ancel still had a drink in his free hand.

But it wasn’t terrible. It was sweet. Berenger’s lips were warm and soft. There was something almost magical about it. Something romantic about how Berenger was looking at him. God, he wanted to take Berenger apart. 

Berenger was smiling at him.

“That’s good,” Ancel whispered. “You look completely besotted. Thank you for saving me from him.”

Berenger’s smile faded. “He’s a creep--”

“A creep with a 300 million account,” Ancel said, smiling fakely at him. 

“I don’t think that--”

“Dessert!” Ancel said brightly, steering them toward the table. He kept a firm hold on Berenger’s arm.

“I don’t want to upset Auguste,” Berenger said, standing next to a table of pastries and looking uncomfortable.

“Because of the account size? Nah, Auguste wants to drop him--”

“Because of you--” Berenger started, but they were interrupted by Auguste himself, who was, admittedly, frowning a bit.

“What’s going on?”

Berenger squirmed away from Ancel’s hold on his arm.

“Harrison is a creep who wants to take me ‘somewhere private,’” Ancel said.

“That asshole,” Auguste said, glancing across the room to where Harrison was standing at the bar. “We should drop him. He harassess other clients and staff as soon as he has a drink, and he starts drinking at breakfast.”

“I agree,” said Berenger. “It’s not the environment we want.”

“You’re out of your minds,” Ancel said. “Three hundred million,” he said slowly. “Three hundred million. Just give me a larger portion of the profits and I’ll happily go blow him.”

Both Auguste and Berenger looked uncomfortable at that.

“Basically I would do it for a couple thousand,” Ancel said. “That’s like, a fraction of a percent of his account.”

Auguste blinked. Berenger’s eyes were wide.

“No,” Auguste said.

Berenger tore his eyes off Ancel and looked over at Auguste gratefully.

Auguste continued, his voice firm. “You’re not going to sleep with Harrison.”

Ancel opened his mouth, as though he might try to argue, but he didn’t get any words out before Auguste continued.

“I’m going to walk him out,” Auguste said, and he turned off toward the bar. 

Ancel turned toward the dessert display. They had tried a new bakery for the desserts, this time, some place called The Summer Palace. The presentation looked nice. Everything was very tastefully arranged. Ancel hadn’t tried any of the cakes or eclairs, since he didn’t eat carbs after eight, unless it was for a really good cause like fruity drinks or break-up ice cream. But they smelled good. He made a mental note giving The Summer Palace a bump in his ratings.

He’d apparently made Berenger uncomfortable, because Berenger excused himself as soon as Auguste had Harrison out of the door, and Ancel didn’t see him again for the rest of the night.


	3. Chapter 3

A couple more weeks at work went by. Ancel stared at Berenger’s closed office door and tried not to remember kissing him. Berenger continued to avoid Ancel. 

Auguste pitched dropping Harrison’s account to the other partners. Ancel read the minutes of the partners’ meeting. Even in the carefully typed up notes, which often omitted some of the partners’ more colorful language, the proposal went over like a lead balloon, with only Berenger’s support. 

Auguste assigned the account to one of the associates, instead, Lazar, and told Lazar not to try too hard with it, and Lazar smirked in a way that indicated he understood. 

A month later, the next partner’s meeting produced an even juicier piece of news, which was Berenger bringing up that he was considering selling out.

Ancel picked up the packet he’d been reading and walked into Auguste’s office. 

Lazar was there, both he and Auguste turned over at the interruption. “Excuse me,” Ancel said, in his most fake sweet tone. “I need to speak with Auguste.”

Auguste looked like he might be about to object, but Lazar could take a hint. “I’ll come back later.” 

Lazar left in such a rush he didn’t bother to close Auguste’s door on the way out.

Ancel threw the notes down on Auguste’s desk. “What the hell is this?”

Auguste made a quizzical gesture, picking up the notes. 

“It’s the partners’ meeting notes,” Ancel said, giving Auguste a clue. “Why is Berenger talking about leaving?”

Auguste’s face went blank. “He’s thinking of leaving.”

“Why?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Auguste had his stubborn face on.

“I’m asking you.”

Auguste pursed his lips and stared defiantly at the notes.

“What are you doing about it?” Ancel said. “You spent three months trying to get him here, you said it was the best thing you’d done.”

Ancel could see Auguste change from defensive to offensive tactics, raising his head and squaring his shoulders. “Why do you care, you don’t work for him.”

Ancel opened his mouth to respond--

“Or do you have some kind of arrangement?” Auguste said. “If he’s the type that tries to go around poaching my assistant even after I warned him off--”

“Poaching your--”

“--then I don’t know if I even care if he works here. You’re not going with him. I don’t care what he offered you, I’ll double it.”

“Double--”

“What did he promise you?” Auguste continued. “Is he going to drag you to some mid-size firm where everyone works in cubicles and they’ll actually take you up on the offer to blow the asshole clients--”

“I just want to fuck him!” Ancel interrupted.

Auguste made a face. “Harrison?”

“Berenger!”

Auguste blinked. 

There was a moment of quiet. The door was still open. The atrium was oddly quiet, which probably meant that at least five people were holding their breath listening to this fight. If one of them was Orlant the whole company would know in the next five minutes.

“You don’t want to have sex with Harrison,” Auguste said, slowly.

“No one wants to have sex with Harrison,” Ancel said. He felt fairly confident about that assertion.

“You do want to have sex with Berenger,” said Auguste.

“Yes!”

“But like,” Auguste clarified, “outside of work.”

“He asked me on a date,” said Ancel. “Three times!”

“Which has nothing to do with work,” Auguste said again.

“I did have a fantasy about the chair in his office,” Ancel confessed.

“That is so unsanitary,” Auguste said. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Ancel said. “He stopped asking me out and now he’s leaving.”

Auguste looked weird for a moment, rubbing his chin. “I may have--told him to back off.”

“What?” Ancel screeched. “Why would you do that--”

“I thought he was trying to hire you!”

“You have to undo it!”

“He was always lurking about, looking at you!”

“Go talk to him!”

Auguste grumbled, getting up from his chair. 

Ancel crossed his arms over his chest, supervising. “And I heard what you said about doubling whatever he offered me, give me a raise or I will start to look for other offers--”

Auguste waved a hand. “Yes, yes. Bring me the form tomorrow, I’ll sign it.”

“But you have to go talk to Berenger right now.”

“I’m going!”

Auguste was more careful than Lazar, and did close the door to Berenger’s office behind him, so Ancel couldn’t supervise his clarification. He thought about going over to Berenger’s assistant Martine’s desk and making her let him listen in on her intercom, but Martine was often stubborn about such things and also he needed to figure out how many people had listened to his and Auguste’s fight and what to do to control the gossip mill.

Both Lazar and Orlant were standing at the coffee maker taking way too long to put a pod into the machine, which was a bad sign. 

Also, Ancel had a terrible problem with turning red when he was angry, and blotchy red skin didn’t look good with red hair, so he retreated to the restroom. He went to the third floor, where there were almost no offices, so that he could lock the door and sit with his back to the wall for a long moment and then fix his face in the mirror. 

He fantasized briefly about quitting and telling Auguste to shove it, and then he thought about how much money he was going to write down on the raise form the following day and how Auguste was going to have to sign it. He tried to calm down so his face wouldn’t be disgusting, and then he got kind of worked up again in his own head and splashed some water on his face and tried to start the process over again.

When he was leaning over the sink fixing his makeup, there was a knock on the door. “Fuck off!” Ancel said. It was either one of the little interns who worked up on the third floor, or it was Auguste.

He heard footsteps retreat.

He finished in front of the mirror and inspected his face. He looked awful; he could never recover from emotion properly without several hours and usually a shower. It was a curse of a fair complexion. 

There wasn’t much more he could do, though. And it was getting late enough in the evening that probably Lazar and Orlant had lost interest and had to leave for a client dinner or something. He could leave. 

He opened the door just to find another person on the other side of it. He stopped, surprised. It was Berenger. 

Ancel took a step backward. Berenger was faster than he was and stuck his foot in the door and then stuck his arm out to hold it open.

“Fuck off,” Ancel said, weakly. He took another step backward.

Berenger took another step into the bathroom. The door shut behind him. The cut of Berenger’s suit was completely wrong. He had nice shoulders, but it was like he deliberately bought suits to hide any possible good features. Was it just off the rack? Or had he found some kind of blind tailor who agreed to do embarrassing bespoke work?

“Auguste just came to talk to me,” Berenger said.

Ancel didn’t say anything and tried to avoid making eye contact with Berenger or looking at his own expression in the mirror. “Auguste is full of shit.”

“He said that maybe he had previously said something confusing to me about--you and he being involved.”

“As if!” Ancel said.

“You’re not dating Auguste,” Berenger said, slightly questioning.

“Auguste isn’t even gay.”

“He’s not?” Berenger sounded genuinely surprised. Ancel glanced at his face. 

“That’s what he says, anyway,” Ancel let his own skepticism come through.

“That’s not the point,” said Berenger, waving his hand dismissively as though brushing thoughts of Auguste aside. “I don’t actually care about Auguste. You’re not dating him?” Berenger took a small step closer to Ancel.

“No,” Ancel said emphatically.

“And you don’t want to date him?” Another step.

“Absolutely not!” Ancel made a large protective x with his hands.

“Would you--consider--dating me?”

“You didn’t even kiss me!” Ancel said, plaintive.

“At the party!” Berenger managed.

“That was me kissing you,” Ancel objected.

Berenger opened his mouth, like he might try to argue further, but Ancel took a final step in toward Berenger, and kissed him.

“See,” Ancel said, after their lips had met for a moment. Berenger’s eyes blinked open. “That’s me kissing you, like at the party.” Berenger’s eyes were a deep brown, but a much nicer brown than his suit. When they stood close together, their eyes were the same height.

Berenger reached a hand up and rested it around the back of Ancel’s neck, and drew him in again. He kissed Ancel, just as sweet and soft as before.

Their lips separated but they stayed close for a moment, their foreheads touching. 

“Will you go out with me?” said Berenger, quietly.

“Are you asexual?” Ancel said.

Berenger laughed lightly. “Definitely not.” His hand was still warm on the back of Ancel’s neck.

“So if we go out, eventually we could have sex?” Ancel just needed to be clear about this.

Berenger was blushing faintly. “I thought, after we went to dinner four or five times, I could invite you for a romantic weekend away—”

“That’s so sweet,” Ancel said.

“—maybe to Sedona? They have hot air balloon rides with champagne.”

“I love it,” Ancel agreed.

Berenger continued outlining his nine step romantic plan.

Ancel interrupted him. “I love your plan,” he said. “I love that you had a plan. It’s not even a horrible plan--we can even do it.” As long as he controlled what clothes Berenger packed for the getaway, Ancel thought. Or maybe arranged for Berenger’s luggage to be lost and bought him new clothes. Maybe he wouldn’t need clothes. On that thought, Ancel continued. “I need to blow you, right now.”

Berenger stopped with his mouth half open and his eyes wide. Ancel leaned in and pressed a final kiss to his shocked mouth and then got down on his knees.

“Ancel,” Berenger said, clearly shocked, but he didn’t say anything further. The tile floor was hard on his knees, but the view in front of him was rewarding. He could see the bulge in Berenger’s wool pants and raised his hands to Berenger’s belt.

The belt was the only decent piece of clothing Berenger was wearing, Ancel thought--it was plain leather with a simple buckle--but then when he had it open and Berenger’s pants around his thighs, Ancel reconsidered, because Berenger’s underwear wasn’t terrible.

It also wasn’t necessary. Ancel pushed it down Berenger’s thighs also.

Berenger raised a fist to his mouth and said something mumbled into his hand.

Ancel had imagined this. Well, not quite this. He’d pictured something furtive, kneeling under Berenger’s desk in his office. He hadn’t imagined the third floor bathroom. But the point was, he’d thought about going down on Berenger.

He’d wondered about Berenger’s cock. Maybe Berenger was reluctant to fall into bed while dating because it was unusually small, or ridiculously large, or strangely curved?

It wasn’t, though. It seemed to suit Berenger. He was cut and the perfect size for Ancel to wrap his hand around, with only a slight curve. He had been half-hard already when Ancel had lowered his underwear, and Ancel stroked him a few times with his hand, feeling the smooth skin. 

He looked up at Berenger. Berenger was looking down at him and Berenger’s wide eyes were locked on his. 

“Don’t mess up my hair,” said Ancel. 

Berenger nodded quickly.

“I don’t mind hair pulling in general, but we’re at work,” he explained.

Berenger nodded again.

“And warn me when you’re going to come.”

Berenger nodded again, and then Ancel could see that Berenger took in a deep breath and held it while Ancel leaned in.

Ancel had kind of a style, for fellatio. He liked to start with some licking and maybe more stroking with his hand. That let him assess things a bit. He could see how the guy smelled, and tasted, and how responsive he was, and if he was well mannered about things like grabbing Ancel’s hair and thrusting his hips, or if he was a bit rude. Berenger was perfectly polite.

After Ancel had used his mouth and his tongue to evaluate the taste and wetly lick the shaft of the cock, he moved to the head. He swiped his tongue over the slit, which got a hiss from Berenger and a stronger taste for Ancel. 

Then, he used what he thought of as his signature move, and wrapped his lips around the head, stroked slowly with his tongue, and looked up through his eyelashes to appreciate the effect.

Berenger was clinging with one hand to the bathroom counter, and still had the other hand pressed against his mouth. His eyes remained wide and appreciative.

So Ancel decided to show off a bit--Berenger deserved it--and took Berenger in deeper.

After, Ancel fixed his makeup again, with Berenger lingering next to him, giving him warm looks and shy glances. 

The next morning, Ancel gave Auguste his mail, with the form for his raise on the top. He’d gone bold and asked for a large number.

“I talked to Berenger,” Auguste said.

“Orlant has you on a call at nine.”

“I was very clear with him,” said Auguste. “I just want to be clear that if he leaves, this is not my fault—”

“He’s not leaving,” Ancel said. “We’re getting married.”

Auguste gaped. “What? Already?”

“Not right now,” said Ancel. “I have a two year plan.”

“Does he know about this?” said Auguste.

“We don’t talk about the plan until month eleven,” said Ancel.

“I see,” said Auguste in a tone of voice that clearly conveyed he didn’t.


	4. Chapter 4

The plan worked well. They didn’t go to Sedona on their fifth date, but Ancel did let Berenger book them in a weekend away at a spa, and in the morning they had couples massages, and then couples facials, and then in the afternoon Berenger did aqua yoga in the pool while Ancel watched from the shade, and the anticipation grew deliciously.

They ate in their suite, ordering finger foods from room service, and feeding each other pieces of dessert turned into making out, and making out turned into--more making out, and then eventually Ancel felt like they had had a completely sufficient amount of romance and he said what he’d been thinking for the last few weeks, which was, “God, I want to take you apart.”

Berenger--instead of making excuses or telling Ancel he should get him home by midnight like he was a pumpkin--turned faintly pink and said, “Yes, please,” and they fell into the bed.

Berenger was perfect. They switched positions three times because Ancel couldn’t decide what he liked best. Bending Berenger over the side of the bed gave a wonderful angle for athletic thrusting. Spooning behind Berenger let them be deliciously close together. Pressing Berenger on his back against the bed let them kiss, and he could stare into Berenger’s eyes.

Berenger messed up Ancel’s two year plan by unexpectedly proposing to Ancel in month five. But since everything had been going so spectacularly otherwise, Ancel only complained a little bit. Getting Berenger out of his suits was just as rewarding as Ancel had anticipated. Messing Berenger up was glorious. Berenger turned out to be satisfyingly into spoiling Ancel in small romantic things—flowers, dinner, romantic old fashioned gestures like kissing his fingers—and satisfyingly into letting Ancel take him apart in bed.

They fell into spending a great deal of time together. They both worked a lot, and Berenger had only recently moved to the area, and Ancel had moved a few years before but had never ended up with the group of friends he had had at college in the city. Berenger’s courtship came with whole new social vistas. Berenger didn’t like to be alone at client dinners—so they went out a few times a week, and Ancel already knew who all of the clients were, and he could use the company database to look up their wives names and the notes about their favorite foods. He understood client dinners were about work as much as they were about having fun, and he suggested things in the city for the guests to do, offered to make reservations or connect them with other people he knew, and fed Radel’s salon a steady stream of client’s wives.

In private, Berenger proved to have a delicious sense of humor that he suppressed in public for the sake of being polite. He surprised Ancel by agreeing when Ancel said Orlant’s girlfriend probably dumped him because he looked like an ox, or that the newest intern needed to wear longer skirts—

“Was that even a skirt?” said Berenger, “I thought it was a large belt.”

—although he disagreed when Ancel dismissed the ancient rumor that Auguste had once been spotted at a sex club.

“Hm, I could see it.”

“What?” Ancel tried to imagine his boss in a sex club. He could kind of picture dressing Auguste all in leather, but that was as far as he got before his mental image of Auguste just blinked at him and Ancel lost it. “Auguste isn’t kinky. He isn’t even gay.”

“He could be kinky and not gay,” Berenger argued.

“But he’s not,” said Ancel.

It was fairly straightforward to shift all of the wedding planning that Ancel had had in his head for the two year mark to the six month mark. Wedding planning was glorious.

“I’m going to quit my job and become a wedding planner,” said Ancel, spread out at Berenger’s kitchen table with seven wedding planning books and four magazines open around him. 

“Okay,” Berenger said mildly. 

Auguste’s reaction involved more expletives and a reminder that he had signed Ancel’s raise form without any type of complaint just a few months prior.

Ancel conceded that working with a bride was probably different than planning his own wedding, and refrained.

Ancel met Berenger’s sister Collette, who was the size of a whale and apparently about to spawn two new progeny. Collette’s fashion sense was about as boring as Berenger’s, but she was nice, like Berenger, and polite to Ancel, and seemed genuinely pleased that he was marrying her brother. 

Berenger asked about Ancel’s family, and Ancel said, fake brightly, “Let’s not talk about them!” and Berenger took a hint.

They began looking for a house. 

“What kind of house do you want,” Berenger asked. 

Ancel pursed his lips. “Big.”

Their realtor showed them twenty-seven houses before they found one that they both liked.

They closed on the house two weeks after the wedding, and then there was the whole business of decorating the house, and moving into it, and then inviting everyone they knew to come over and see it in a giant housewarming. 

Then there was the whole business with the gardener, who Ancel ultimately fired, and then things started to get interesting again at work.

Auguste stood in front of Ancel’s desk.

“I have a project for you,” Auguste said. He looked uncomfortable and he usually gave work to Ancel by just leaving it on Ancel’s desk, so this was already suspicious.

“Yes?” said Ancel.

“You can say no,” said Auguste.

Ancel was more suspicious by the minute. “What is it?”

“I need someone to,” Auguste had a facial expression that somehow indicated disbelief and internal conflict at the same time, “plan my wedding.”

“Sorry?” said Ancel. “I thought you said plan your wedding.”

“Yes,” said Auguste.

“When is this wedding?”

Auguste shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s why I need someone to plan it.”

“Is this like, a hypothetical wedding that takes place twenty years in the future?” said Ancel. “Is this because of that client--” there was a new client who was more conservative than half of the firm appreciated.

“No, I want to get married now,” said Auguste.

“Did you have someone in mind for who you wanted to marry?” Ancel asked, wondering if Auguste was hoping he could solve that for him also. Maybe he could order Auguste a Russian bride.

Auguste looked at Ancel like he was being ridiculous, which was insulting. Auguste was always the ridiculous one in their conversations, whether he admitted it or not.

“Damen.”

“You’re--marrying Damen.”

Auguste nodded. 

“This is the same Damen who you go out drinking with.”

“Is there another Damen?”

“I didn’t know you were admitting you were dating him.”

“If you don’t want to help me--”

“You always said you weren’t gay.”

“Fine,” Auguste pinched the bridge of his nose, which was a sign he was annoyed. “I’ll find someone else to help plan the--”

Auguste was really beyond the type of help that Ancel could offer, but Ancel liked planning weddings. “Give me your Mastercard.”

Auguste handing the card over was perfunctory--Ancel already had most of Auguste’s accounts. But it was a symbol, and Ancel wanted to be sure that Auguste understood what he was asking for if he let Ancel do this.

Auguste took out his wallet, slid the card out, and handed it to Ancel.

“Give me Damen’s phone number,” said Ancel.

Auguste pulled up a contact on his phone and read off the number to Ancel. 

“Okay,” Ancel said. 

“You’ll do it?” Auguste looked grateful. 

“Yes.”

The wedding was small; it didn’t turn out too difficult to plan. There were only twenty or so personal invitations from the grooms, mostly Damen’s family, and then a series of business acquaintances that Auguste should invite or risk insulting. They could fit in even a small venue, and that opened up scheduling opportunities Ancel hadn’t had for his own wedding, and he started making some calls.

At home, he and Berenger were setting out food in the dining room. Berenger had picked up from Yellowfin on their way home. “You’ll never guess what happened to me today,” said Ancel.

“You wound up on the cover of a magazine,” said Berenger. 

In Berenger’s defense, the last time Ancel had led with that start, he had in fact ended up on the cover of a local gay magazine. That wasn’t the point, though.

“No, Auguste is getting married.”

“Really,” said Berenger. “I didn’t know he was seeing anyone.”

“To a man!” Ancel continued.

“Really,” said Berenger again, with the tone he used about especially juicy gossip.

“I knew he was gay,” said Ancel.

“Who is he marrying?” said Berenger. 

“Oh, let me show you a picture,” said Ancel. Once he’d had Damen’s full name from Auguste, he’d spent some time stalking Damen’s social media. Of course Auguste was worthless that way; he had nothing. Damen was better. Ancel had found an old account of Damen’s--there weren’t any recent posts, but there were plenty of posts of Damen weightlifting a few years ago, and it gave some insight into exactly who Auguste was marrying. 

He showed Berenger some of the best pics that he’d saved. 

“Oh wow,” Berenger said.

“I know!” said Ancel. 

“What does he do?” said Berenger.

“He’s a baker,” Ancel said, still feeling betrayed by that. The other half of Damen’s instagram seemed to be pictures of the cakes that he made. How anyone could make cakes like that and still be built like that was a bit baffling.

Ancel’s suspicions were raised by finding old pictures of Damen with a woman--and since they were half-naked in bed he clearly seemed to be with her and not just standing next to her. But then he also had found a picture of Damen wearing a t-shirt that read “BI PRIDE” in giant letters, so.

Auguste ignored the wedding planning so thoroughly that Ancel started to wonder if he even cared about getting married. Auguste’s only involvement was to tell Ancel to stop telling Damen how much things cost, since it was upsetting him.

“He doesn’t understand money,” Ancel told Auguste.

Auguste blinked. “Just don’t tell him.”

Ancel sighed. “Fine.”

Auguste and Damen at the wedding were adorable together and astoundingly hot and Ancel nodded along enthusiastically to Damen’s best man’s speech about how he’d always known they were together even though Auguste kept insisting he wasn’t gay. 

“Bi pride!” someone on the Akielon side of the audience shouted, and Damen raised a hand in solidarity. The best man ignored all of this and continued on.

Ancel met Auguste’s sister. He’d known she existed, because Auguste had put her birthday on his calendar along with other occasions he wanted Ancel to send cards for, and then he’d had a vague sense there was a big fuss about her moving in with Auguste when their uncle had gone to prison. 

Auguste mentioned her, but he didn’t talk about her. He said things like, “I have to pick up Laurent,” or “I can’t travel that day, Damen can’t watch Laurent,” or “I have a thing at Laurent’s school,” but he didn’t talk about what his sister was like, or that she was a miniature version of him, complete with the same arrogant glare, or that she was actually...older...than Ancel had envisioned. Somehow Ancel had pictured her as being a little kid, complete with pigtails and velcro shoes. At the wedding, Auguste’s sister had her hair in an updo, was wearing pearl earrings and a blue silk dress that Ancel thought was Zahair Murad. She could have been a runway model.

Ancel expected that things might change, after the wedding. 

Auguste took a day off, saying, “Damen’s moving in,” which made sense, but what didn’t especially make sense was how almost nothing else changed. Auguste still worked all the time. He didn’t bring Damen to client dinners or invite him to the corporate Christmas party. Auguste showed up alone to all of those events as he always had. Auguste had a wedding ring--Ancel had helped pick it out, and he’d seen it at the wedding reception--but Auguste didn’t wear it. The wedding seemed like a strange aberration in the otherwise consistent life of Auguste DeVere.

Ancel tried to help, a few times. He offered things like, “Would you like me to make dinner reservations for you and Damen to have a romantic night out?” or “Should I help you buy Damen a gift?” for romantic holidays like Valentines Day or the anniversary of the day they got engaged. But Auguste always declined.

While Ancel and Berenger almost always ate out, it seemed like when Auguste and Damen ate together, they almost always ate in. Damen was a baker, maybe he liked cooking. Damen’s birthday was added to the list of occasions for Ancel to remind Auguste about. Auguste didn’t ask Ancel to add their wedding anniversary to the list, but Ancel did that anyway.

The whole relationship didn’t make sense to Ancel. Damen was hot enough to make a rich man turn his head, but probably only one who was gay and admitted being into men. And Auguste was also good looking, and rich to boot, so it was easy to see why Damen might be with him, except for how Damen seemed oblivious to how much money Auguste actually had and offended by the notion.

Ancel didn’t think about it much, though. Auguste didn’t pay him to speculate on his personal life; Auguste paid him to make his work life run smoothly, and Ancel did that. Speculation was just how he amused himself in his free moments, and after a few months it was just another weird thing about Auguste, and there were plenty of those already. The rumor about how he had murdered a junior associate and hidden the body actually got more air time in the company than anything related to his husband, even though it was patently ridiculous to imagine Auguste murdering anyone. The mess would have driven him insane.

Auguste did seem a little happier, Ancel thought. That was good. Coming out of the closet should be happier. He seemed a bit more relaxed, more good days on average than bad days. 

So for several years, Ancel shrugged off anything weird about Auguste as just Auguste being weird.


	5. Chapter 5

Damen and Auguste had been married for about two years when Ancel started to notice things that didn’t quite add up.

Berenger and Ancel had been married for about three years by that point, and Ancel knew it was a danger zone where spouses started to get bored with each other. He’d told Berenger as much over dinner.

“Are you saying you’re bored?” said Berenger, looking both amused and faintly worried.

“No,” said Ancel, because he was way too busy to be bored. “But I don’t want you to be bored,” he said, patting Berenger’s hand. 

“I’m not,” said Berenger.

“Anything kinky you want to try, we can try it,” Ancel promised. “Unless it involves latex,” he said, reconsidering. “I’m really not into that and I think it would mess up my complexion.”

Berenger laughed. “Is there something you want to try?”

“I think we should get a pair of those kinky dice,” Ancel said. “And we can take turns rolling them.”

Which he hadn’t been serious about, but when Berenger came home from work a few days later and gave him a small present in a jewelry-sized box, he wasn’t even disappointed it wasn’t jewelry. 

The first thing Ancel noticed was when he was trying to make sure that someone picked up Auguste’s sister at school. 

Auguste had been supposed to pick her up at four, because there was supposed to be a break between the meeting and the dinner. But when the meeting was still going strong at four thirty, Auguste drew Ancel to the side of the room and asked him to call Damen and get Damen to pick up his sister.

Ancel left the meeting and called Damen, who didn’t pick up. Damen was very annoying that way. He always had ridiculous excuses too, like he had been putting cupcakes in the oven or his hands had been covered in sprinkles.

Ancel texted Damen, “ITS IMPORTANT PICK UP” and then called him again.

Damen answered after the fourth ring, right when Ancel thought he was going to be in voicemail again. “Hello?” Damen said.

There was--something about his voice. 

He was breathing heavily into the phone, Ancel could hear it. His voice was warm and hoarse and--if Ancel hadn’t been staring at Auguste through the glass window of the boardroom, he would have totally guessed he’d called when Damen and Auguste were having sex. 

Damen cleared his throat. “Hello?” he said again.

Ancel could still picture him, just based on his voice, and he pictured Damen in bed, his hair mussed up and his lips wet. It was not unappealing.

“What are you doing?” Ancel said, because he couldn’t stop himself.

There was some kind of background noise that Ancel would have guessed was rolling on a bed and waving someone else off. 

“Nothing,” Damen said. “Baking.”

“What are you baking?”

“Nothing.”

He was the worst liar Ancel had ever met.

“Auguste needs you to pick up his sister at school.”

Damen laughed a little. “Laurent was done at four.”

“His meeting is running long.” And that’s lucky for you, Ancel thought, you cheating bastard. What would you do if Auguste had arrived home with his sister to find you “baking nothing”?

“Yeah,” Damen said. There was some kind of background noise again. “I got it.”

“When can I tell Laurent you’ll get her?” Ancel said, trying to get a sense of where Damen was. Was he at their place in the city, or was he smart enough to hook up somewhere else?

“I’ll text her,” Damen said, and he hung up.

Ancel didn’t want Auguste’s sister--who had quite a temper--to start irately calling Auguste in the middle of the meeting, complaining that he was late to pick her up and she was abandoned on a street corner. That had happened before. It happened less, now, because she could drive and often drove herself places, or she caught a rideshare if she didn’t have her car with her. But early memories had scarred Ancel a bit. So he texted Laurent.

Ancel: Damen is coming

He accidentally pressed send before his message was finished. He continued.

Ancel: to pick you up. Auguste’s meeting went long.

Laurent responded with a “thx” and a smiley face after a long moment, which was uncharacteristically friendly for her, given that she’d already been abandoned at the school for forty-five minutes or so.

Ancel lowered his phone and stared through the glass boardroom window at Auguste. Auguste was quiet, at the moment with his ‘listening’ face on, leaning in toward Alice Heatherway. George was the one who had talked most of the meeting, but Ancel shared Auguste’s sense that Alice was the one who actually called the shots and would sign the contract.

Damen was cheating, Ancel thought.

Then he argued with himself. He had no evidence of that. A breathless phone call could be anything. Damen might have been at the gym (then why did he say he was baking?). He might have gone for a run (but there were no outdoor background noises). He might have been jerking off himself at home, or watching porn, and not about to tell Ancel on the phone what kind of porn he liked. 

Ancel spent an interlude wondering what kind of porn Damen liked.

Or, Ancel acknowledged, Damen and Auguste might have an arrangement. They might not be monogamous. Many couples weren’t. They might have other partners, or be allowed casual hookups, or have a steady third. The fact that Ancel suspected Damen was having sex when his husband was at work didn’t necessarily mean that Auguste didn’t know.

In the meeting, Auguste glanced casually down at his phone, held carefully in his lap, and swiped a message away, setting the phone face down on the table again.

Maybe that was Damen sending Auguste something romantic so he wouldn’t suspect, Ancel thought acidly. Or it was Damen taking a dick pick of his hook up and sending it to Auguste for approval. 

Ancel didn’t know what to do. 

The meeting finally ended. Ancel caught up with Auguste briefly in Auguste’s office before he headed to meet the Heatherways at dinner. Auguste was looking at his phone again. When Ancel came in, he tucked it away in his pocket.

Ancel pasted on a smile. “What was Damen doing today?” he said.

Auguste shrugged. “Work, I think.”

“How’s The Summer Palace doing?” Ancel asked. Damen had bought a bakery a few months ago. Or, more accurately, Auguste had bought Damen a bakery, and Damen was an ungrateful cheating bastard.

“Good,” said Auguste. “They’re taking internet orders now.”

Ancel nodded. “Yeah, Huet started putting in our catering that way.”

Ancel bit his tongue and let Auguste leave for dinner and then cornered Berenger in bed that night, after they had very satisfactorily rolled a “kiss nipples” (Ancel) and “finger ass” (Berenger).

Ancel liked to be the big spoon, so he talked into Berenger’s neck. “I don’t know what to do.”

Berenger made an encouraging noise and patted his hand, which was still stroking Berenger’s nipple softly. “Keep doing that.”

Ancel did, but that hadn’t been what he meant. “Hypothetically,” he said, “if I had a strong clue that someone’s husband was cheating but no actual evidence, should I say something?”

Berenger sat up and turned to face him, suddenly tense. “Is this one of those hypotheticals where you are actually talking about us?”

Ancel sat up. “Oh, darling, no.” He kissed Berenger softly and he could feel Berenger relax a bit. “Auguste and Damen,” he said. 

They settled back down against the bed, spooning again. “You think Auguste is cheating?” Berenger said, sounding doubtful.

“No, Damen,” said Ancel.

“That would kill Auguste,” said Berenger. 

Ancel nodded, pressing his lips against Berenger’s shoulder. “But what should I do?” said Ancel. “Is it better if he doesn’t know, and I should just ignore it? Or is it better if I tell him?”

Berenger thought it was better to assume the best of Damen and not say anything. Of course he did.

Ancel decided the best course of action was to stalk Damen. 

He started accumulating sources. He already knew Auguste’s calendar, and sometimes things about Auguste’s family, so that was a start.

The bakery’s move into the internet world had meant that they had expanded into not just online orders, but social media marketing. One of Damen’s employees was tasked with daily updates on the company’s social media pages, and so Ancel started routinely checking the bakery’s twitter and instagram and facebook pages for updates. He could usually tell that way if Damen was working, because there would be some kind of picture of the bakery owner smiling and proudly holding a tart or a cake. Ancel glared at all of his happy, carb-filled pictures.

Damen’s gym had a social media account, and they liked taking pictures of Damen lifting, because it was probably the best free advertising they had. They occasionally posted pictures of Auguste lifting, also, but less frequently, probably because Auguste lifted with a facial expression that suggested he was thinking of dropping the weights on all of his enemies, and Damen seemed to always have a breezy smile. 

Half of Damen’s schedule seemed to revolve around Laurent’s school schedule, which was posted on the school’s website, so Ancel moved it carefully onto his stalker calendar. He kept Auguste’s work calendar, and then a second calendar to try to figure out Damen. 

But these public sources weren’t really all that helpful. He needed more information. He wondered if Auguste had some sort of location tracking app for his family. Ancel made conversation one time about how he and Berenger used one to know where the other was and how easy it was to pick Berenger up at the airport because of it, and got Auguste to mention that he’d used another one to find Laurent occasionally.

It was trivial for Ancel to look up that site and stare at the login page. He knew Auguste’s personal email, of course. What was the password? He bet he knew that, too, because Auguste used the same password of his parent’s anniversary for almost all of his accounts.

Ancel tried it, crossed his fingers, glanced back at Auguste’s office to make sure the door wasn’t opening, and then looked back and grinned in satisfaction as the login screen disappeared and a map appeared on the screen.

There was, as Auguste had mentioned, a little person icon labeled “Laurent.” She was boringly and predictably located at the building Ancel already knew was Laurent’s school.

And, satisfyingly, there was a second little person icon labeled “Damen.” Ancel smirked. He had him now.

But the aggravating thing was that Damen never did anything suspicious. Ancel watched them for weeks, and all they did was completely innocent things. Damen’s dot moved from Auguste’s place to the gym to The Summer Palace and then back to Auguste’s place. Laurent’s dot went to school and the library and Auguste’s house. Damen and Laurent’s dots moved together to the farmer’s market and then back to Auguste’s place. 

Damen’s dot went to a sex toy store, the one owned by crazy lesbian hippies downtown, which might have been interesting except for how Auguste’s dot went along with him. That was juicy gossip that a few months prior would have fascinated Ancel, but now that he was on a determined search for evidence of Damen’s cheating, it was dismissed.

Maybe Damen was smarter than Ancel ever thought, and he was clever enough to not take his phone along with him when he hooked up. Maybe he had a second phone. But Auguste would notice, Ancel thought. Auguste and Damen spent a fair amount of time together, Ancel knew from watching their dots at home. They spent long evenings and whole weekends with just the three of them in their apartment. Auguste was good at seeing things. If Damen were acting suspiciously, Auguste would notice. 

If Damen had any brains, he’d be hooking up when Auguste wasn’t around, when he traveled for business or worked late in the evenings. But Damen seemed to similarly just sit around Auguste’s place with his sister. He was a perfect house husband. Maybe that was why Auguste had married him.

Maybe Damen was smarter than Ancel had thought and was only hooking up in places where he had every right to be. Maybe he blew guys in the locker room at the gym and that was why he was always smiling in his pictures there. Maybe The Summer Palace was a front, for--for--a giant sex ring. That’s why all of the men who worked there were giant beefy dudes. There was probably some kind of code. Cupcake day meant oral. Tart day meant--

Ancel tried to spend a few days decoding the bakery's messages, but it was pointless.

He gave up in defeat and told Berenger he couldn’t find anything.

“You’ve been looking?”

Ancel had stepped into this one. He hadn’t really described the full extent of his stalking of Damen to Berenger because he thought he would get the exact disapproving frown that Berenger was now wearing.

“Auguste deserves to know if his husband is cheating on him.”

“He hasn’t hired you to stalk his husband,” Berenger pointed out. 

“My job is to make his life easier,” Ancel insisted. He took a broad view of what that entailed. “Anyway, the point is that I’m not stalking Damen any longer, because he’s not even doing anything interesting.”

A few weeks later, there was some kind of update with the location tracking app that prompted Auguste to reset his password, which he apparently did, and to something more creative that effectively locked Ancel out. He was back to just checking all the social media for The Summer Palace.


	6. Chapter 6

In the spring, Ancel found a suspicious charge on Auguste’s statement from Marriott rewards. It wasn’t that unusual of an item--two nights at the Marriott New York East Side. Ancel thought that Auguste had stayed at that hotel before, when he had visited his sister at school for the weekend. When Ancel scanned backward on the statement, he could see it was the same. And it had been a double points weekend.

But the suspicious part about it was that it was a weekend when Ancel knew that Auguste had been returning from Paris and then at work in the office. Ancel had come in that Sunday and he’d brought lunch because Lazar’s whole team had been refining a pitch.

First, Ancel had a talk with himself about being overly suspicious and stalking his boss’s family. There were probably totally reasonable explanations for the hotel room. Auguste could have arranged it for his sister--maybe she needed to leave her dorm for the weekend? They might have been...painting. Exterminating bugs. Something. Auguste would be a complete sucker for that kind of sob story. If there were bugs in her dorm room Ancel was only surprised Auguste hadn’t moved her into a hotel permanently. Or Damen could have been visiting the city for reasons unrelated to having a secret affair. Like, maybe, visiting Auguste’s sister. 

Ancel didn’t have access to the credit card that had paid for the room, but Auguste presumably did, and if he had had any concerns about one of them putting hotel rooms on his card, he hadn’t mentioned those to Ancel. He also hadn’t recently seemed crushed and depressed like he’d just found out his husband was cheating.

So there was really no reason to think more on this.

Ancel decided to gather some additional information. 

He called the hotel and crossed his fingers that he’d get a clerk he could sweet talk, and not someone too bent on following the rules. 

He ended up talking to Mary. Ancel had a good feeling about Mary. He gave her a whole sob story. He was Auguste’s assistant. He had this post-it about expensing a hotel stay, but he didn’t have a receipt and he didn’t know how to file it with with the right account and to do that he needed an itemized bill, but all he had was this post-it! He was such an airhead and he was definitely going to get fired. He threw in a few tears.

Mary was very sympathetic. She could help him, she assured him. She was looking up the records.

“Okay, I found the check-in,” Mary said.

“You’re the best,” Ancel gushed. “I’m going to get fired for sure.”

“The guest who checked in was Damianos?” She sounded out Damen’s full name slowly, and butchered it less than many people did.

“Okay,” Ancel said, pretending to take notes as she spelled Damen’s name. That wasn’t especially interesting; he had already guessed it was likely Damen at the hotel. 

“Oh, I remember him,” Mary said. “He had a woman with him.”

A woman! Ancel hadn’t been expecting that. He’d assumed that if Damen was fucking around on Auguste there would be another man in the equation. He supposed this was the problem with bi guys. Women were also a factor. Somehow that made it worse, Ancel thought. 

Mary was continuing. “She checked in too, her name was--”

Ancel was practically holding his breath.

“--Laurent DeVere.”

Ancel let out a sigh. That wasn’t as interesting. He’d thought, for a moment, that he was going to get the name of some mystery woman that Damen was having an affair with, and then he just wound up with Auguste’s sister.

Except, as he thought about it a little bit more, it was kind of weird.

Because why would Laurent check into the hotel with Damen. Why was Damen even in the city? Visiting her? But she lived there, she had a room on campus. It wouldn’t explain why she would join him at the hotel.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, and she was meeting up with him there at the same moment he checked in. Or maybe she came by to...visit the spa, or get free breakfast, or something. 

“Can you send me an itemized bill for our accounts?” said Ancel.

Mary asked for his email, and he gave it to her, and she promised it was in the mail. Ancel thanked her profusely, and then opened his email. 

Ancel looked through all the charges. One room. Two nights. Enough room service food to feed two people who never left the hotel room, even if one of the people was Damen.

Sure, maybe Auguste’s husband traveled sometimes with his sister, who he had adopted. Maybe they even shared a room, though that--seemed weird. If Ancel were on a trip with Berenger’s sister Colette, they wouldn’t share a room. Ancel glanced at the itemized statement again. Especially not a room with a single king bed. They’d get two queens, at least.

What on earth had they been doing for a whole weekend? Ancel could only think of one thing to do in a hotel room for a whole weekend, and it sure wasn’t something he’d ever do with Colette. 

But it was preposterous to think that he’d go to Auguste and say, “Your husband ordered a lot of room service, I think he’s fucking your sister.”

Presumably Auguste knew Damen had gone away that weekend. He would have the credit card statements, he would have been home alone when Damen was gone. Thinking back, Ancel sort of remembered Auguste mentioning something about Damen going to visit his sister, so it didn’t seem like it had been a secret.

Ancel thought back to the first suspicious phone call that had piqued his interest. Could Damen have been with Laurent when Ancel had been so convinced he was having sex? If Damen had picked Laurent up at school when it had ended, or if Laurent had gotten a ride some other way--they might have already been at home together when Ancel had called. 

Ancel reconsidered all of the time he had seen Damen’s dot and Laurent’s dot at Auguste’s place alone together and thought that it was uninteresting. 

But could Auguste’s husband and his sister really be having sex right under Auguste’s nose and he wouldn’t know?

He couldn’t really do any more with his second piece of evidence than he had been able to do with his first. And if he shared it with Berenger he was likely to get another lecture on the virtues of privacy, so he didn’t even want to do that.

He tried to push it aside and not think about it too much. Basically only a few times a day, or whenever Auguste mentioned his husband or his sister. After all, Auguste had started to wear his wedding ring more often, and once Ancel had even heard him mention his husband to a client, which from Auguste was the equivalent of shouting his love from the rooftops. 

That summer, there was an insane time. Right before a giant client event, Auguste had to go to France. Again. And then, right before he left for France, he paused as he was walking past Ancel’s office.

“Ancel.”

“Yes.”

“Next week.”

“Yes?”

“I talked to Damen and Laurent and I want to take them along to Paris.”

Ancel raised an eyebrow. “You’ll have hardly any time to do stuff with them.”

“They can hang out together,” Auguste said. Ancel had some thoughts about that, primarily about what they were likely to be doing, if they were hanging out together. He supposed they would have just as much opportunity to fuck if Auguste left them at home together as if he took them along to France.

Across the atrium, Lazar waved. Auguste held up a finger for him to wait a minute.

“Can you add flights for them,” said Auguste. “And a second hotel room for Laurent?”

“Auguste,” Lazar shouted.

“I’m coming!” Auguste said, shooting a last glance at Ancel.

“Of course,” Ancel said.

He talked to their travel agent right away, and set up the flights for Damen and Laurent to be the same as Auguste’s, and then the travel agent wanted him to pick their seat arrangements, and Ancel was feeling a bit petty, so he put Auguste next to his sister and Damen in the row behind them. That fucker could just watch and not sit next to either of his lovers, Ancel thought.

He truly didn’t mean to set them all up in the same hotel room. He’d meant to talk to the travel agent about adding a room to the reservation, but then Lazar had started texting him from the meeting about a catering crisis once he had the flights set up, and he said, “I’ll call you back,” and then it completely fled his mind.

They had flown in overnight, on a Saturday, so they arrived Sunday, and then on Monday morning Ancel came in to work and looked at his calendar and saw the “Auguste in Paris” reminder and thought, “Oh, shit.”

He’d forgotten the hotel room for Auguste’s sister.

He was kind of surprised he hadn’t gotten a series of annoyed calls from Auguste when they’d arrived and checked in. Maybe Auguste had just added a room to the reservation at the front desk. He would have probably still told Ancel off for forgetting it, and there were no text messages, no emails, nothing. Maybe he was distracted, or the check in process had been in French and he’d been confused. Auguste didn’t speak French.

Ancel called the hotel. 

He didn’t speak French either, and the French always made it five times more complicated than it had to be to conduct a conversation about reservations in English. Finally Ancel got someone who agreed to speak English with him on the phone. “Je m’appelle Guillaume,” the man said.

“Hi Guillaume,” Ancel said. He explained the problem. He had screwed up the reservation, he thought that when arriving, his boss would have added a room, he needed to make sure everything was correct now for their paperwork.

“No,” Guillaume said. “Monsieur Auguste has not added a room to his stay.”

“Was the room added by his husband, or by his sister?”

“No,” Guillaume said. “In fact, we have no rooms.”

“No rooms?”

“All booked,” said Guillaume. “Our hotel, we have a sister, on Rue--”

“No, thank you,” said Ancel, and he hung up.

Ancel spent the week in a nervous haze. He was sure that he was going to get an earful from Auguste when he returned about how he had to spend a week living in one room with his husband and his sister. If nothing else, it distracted Ancel from worrying that Damen was sneaking off to Laurent’s room to fuck her. If all three of them were in the same room, then no one was fucking anyone. 

Auguste came back, and all of them were immediately engrossed in the last minute preparations for the giant client event. 

After all the clients had gone to bed, Lazar decided they should polish off the rest of the bar. 

“It’s already paid for,” Ancel agreed.

Jord started mixing drinks. 

Even Auguste took a glass.

They talked at first about the event, and then about how bad Jord was at making drinks, and then Lazar took over mixing and poured with a much more generous hand than Jord.

“You seem relaxed today, boss,” Lazar said to Auguste.

“Keep pouring,” Auguste said, amused.

“You get laid?” said Lazar.

Everyone turned Auguste’s direction. Auguste stared them down evenly.

“A little city of love?” Lazar continued, drunkenly. “Take your husband along to get him to put out--”

“Do you have trouble finding lovers who will put out?” Auguste said, trying to turn the tables back on Lazar.

“I did date a guy once who said he’d only bend over for me if I took him to the Eiffel Tower,” Lazar continued.

“How’d that go?” said Auguste.

“I dumped him,” Lazar said. There was much laughter.

“Damen isn’t that particular,” said Auguste. 

There was more laughter. “So Paris was good to you?” said Lazar, lasciviously.

Auguste nodded, looking smug.

Ancel stared down at his martini glass. Auguste’s confessions hadn’t even been raunchy, by his normal standard. Implying he’d gotten laid with his husband on a trip was--so tame that even Berenger wouldn’t have complained that Ancel was oversharing, if Ancel had said it. But Ancel was staring at the olive at the bottom of his glass, thinking, there was only one room. 

“Do romantic walks in the moonlight get Damen in the mood?” said Lazar.

“Breathing gets Damen in the mood,” Auguste said.

There was only one room, Ancel thought. He tipped back the rest of his martini and placed it down on the bar again. “Pour me another.” There was only one room.

The next morning, they all came in to work late. 

Ancel and Auguste caught up around lunch.

“How was your trip?” Ancel asked.

“Good,” said Auguste.

Ancel proceeded cautiously. “How as the hotel?”

“Fine.”

“Was there,” Ancel said, clearing his throat. “Any problem with the rooms?”

Auguste looked at him for a moment, and his expression was slightly stricken. “No.”

Ancel and Auguste stared at each other for a long moment. Auguste left and closed his office door behind him. 

Ancel stared blankly at Auguste’s office door. He wasn’t sure what to think.

He would have said, five minutes prior, that there was no way Auguste didn’t have some complaint. Even if Auguste had managed to arrange something with the hotel, or even if it had worked out okay for his sister to be in his suite with his husband, Auguste would have said, well, it was fine “But.”

Auguste was kind of famous for the “But.”

And if his sister was there, the whole time, how on earth did he have time to have enough sex with Damen that he came back well fucked and in a remarkably tolerant mood? Did they wait until she was in the shower and then sneak in a quickie? That wouldn’t result in the kind of relaxed Auguste they’d seen the night before.

If Ancel had gotten stuck in a hotel room with Berenger and Colette for a whole week, it was possible that after a few days he would be desperate enough to blow Berenger while Colette was showering. But he wouldn’t have looked satisfied and smug afterward.

And it was impossible to imagine Auguste--who freaked out and wanted to shower after shaking someone’s hand if they smelled bad--having sex without showering and cleaning up afterward. But how would it happen the other way. Oh, nevermind, younger sister, my husband and I are just going into the bathroom to clean up. Or maybe they fucked in the shower?

Ancel tried to picture fucking Berenger in the shower with Colette in the hotel room. It just didn’t compute.

At the same time, how could Damen possibly be having an affair with Auguste’s sister and keeping Auguste satisfied and not having either of the two find out or be mad at him. Maybe Auguste’s sister was okay with being a side piece Damen just snuck in, but at some point it seemed like she would get mad. Or Auguste would get suspicious, or both.

Ancel needed more information.

“Berenger,” he said that evening.

“Yes, dear,” Berenger said.

“Let’s have Auguste over for dinner.”

“If you want,” Berenger said agreeably. “Should we invite Herode, too?”

“I was thinking just Auguste,” said Ancel, “and his family.”

Berenger gave him a look. “Is this part of some plan?”

Ancel looked innocent. “Why do you always think something is part of a plan?”

“Well, it usually is,” said Berenger.

“I just wanted to have a nice dinner party--”

“Are you still paranoid that Auguste’s husband is having an affair?”

That wasn’t it, exactly, so he ignored Berenger. “And show off our nice dishes and the fine silver and--”

They held the dinner party. 

Ancel eyed Auguste and Damen and Laurent, trying to figure out what was really going on between them. Berenger eyed Ancel, probably trying to figure out what his plot was.

But even though Ancel was watching them closely, it was Berenger who made the observation, after they had left.

“Auguste clearly loves both of them very much.”

Ancel was annoyed he hadn’t figured out any other evidence or any clues for how to get more evidence. “He was normal with them.”

“Yes, he was sweet with each of them. Did you see, he rested his hand on their arms in the same way.”

Ancel thought back. He hadn’t especially noticed that gesture of Auguste’s. It had been subtle. Innocent. Just resting his hand lightly on Damen’s upper arm or Laurent’s upper arm. Perfectly appropriate for a husband or a sister. Understated, really. 

“It’s too bad they’re cheating on him together,” said Ancel bitterly.

“You don’t really think that,” Berenger said. 

And Ancel wasn’t sure that he did. There was something going on, he was sure. There were too many suspicious things. Yet, they acted, all three of them, as though they were in perfect harmony. Laurent was charming and polite and viciously funny, and Damen laughed at everyone’s jokes and smiled warmly, and Auguste watched each of them with a vaguely proprietary satisfied gaze. None of them seemed uncomfortable or resentful or suspicious.


	7. Chapter 7

A few months later, Auguste took the atypical step of bringing a guest to a partner’s dinner.

Ancel had already signed him up to go alone when Auguste mentioned he wanted to bring a plus one.

“I thought Damen hated fancy shindigs,” said Ancel.

“I’m bringing Laurent,” said Auguste.

“Your sister?”

“She’s trying to find an internship,” Auguste said. 

Laurent was a perfectly well behaved guest. She was nicely dressed--Ancel didn’t recognize the designer, this time--and she mingled politely with the other partners and their guests. She spoke politely with Herode, helped Jeurre reminisce about his time at their shared alma mater, and she hugged Berenger with genuine warmness and talked with him for a long time. Probably about horses or something. 

Ancel had seen Auguste bring Damen as a guest to events, once or twice, and he’d seen them at his house, and he knew how Auguste fussed over Damen’s appearance. It was the same inspection Auguste gave himself in the mirror before he went into a big meeting, adjusting Damen’s tie or flicking a speck of lint off of his suit.

Laurent received the same treatment. Auguste brushed an eyelash off her cheek, and adjusted the strap of her dress to cover her bra strap. It was normal. Well, it was kind of weird, Ancel acknowledged, but it was normal for Auguste. Auguste would have actually probably done the same thing to Ancel.

Later in the evening, Ancel caught sight of Auguste and Laurent alone off on one of the side balconies. Auguste was holding a drink. He hadn’t been letting his sister drink, that evening. “She’s only twenty,” Ancel had overheard Auguste telling Jeurre. But alone, on the balcony, Laurent took the glass Auguste was holding out of his hand and finished it, and Auguste watched tolerantly.

Laurent set the glass on one of the catering tables, and returned to stand next to her brother. They were looking out over the golf course. Or, they were facing out toward the golf course. They were really looking at each other.

After a moment, Auguste caught hold of Laurent’s chin, and tilted her face from one side to another, as though he was inspecting her makeup.

That was weird, but Ancel still filed it into the “not that weird, for Auguste” category.

What tipped over the line, was when Auguste frowned a little, as though he saw something on Laurent’s face that he didn’t like. Maybe a smudge. But instead of pointing it out to her, or whatever reasonable people might do, Auguste held out his thumb in front of Laurent’s mouth. 

Laurent licked it obediently, and then Auguste used his thumb under her eye to fix whatever stray smudge had been bothering him. 

Ancel tried to talk to Berenger about it later, as they rode home. “It’s weird,” he said. “It’s weird, right?”

“Perhaps you’re over analyzing,” Berenger said.

“It’s weird,” their rideshare driver agreed. 

Ancel appreciated the support.

“It’s the kind of thing you do with your sister when she’s like...four,” said Ancel. “Not twenty. Would you let Colette lick your thumb?”

Berenger frowned a little. “I don’t think Colette would want to.”

“Right, because it’s weird,” said Ancel.

“I don’t have a sister,” the rideshare driver volunteered. “But I wouldn’t let her lick me.”

Ancel nodded.

“I can picture you making me lick your thumb to fix my makeup,” said Berenger.

“Okay, first of all,” said Ancel, “you don’t even wear makeup.” Berenger gave a small amused smile. He liked playing straight man to Ancel’s jokes more than he let on, sometimes. “But if you did, it still doesn’t even matter, because you’re my lover, not my sister.”

“You know better than anyone that Auguste struggles with these things.”

“With his sister licking him? He didn’t look like he was struggling--”

“With--obsessive things. Try to be understanding. It’s a mental illness of some sort.”

“I am very understanding!” Ancel objected. “I put up with his crazy shit all the time! I am just pointing out that it’s weird!”

They arrived at home and spilled out of the car. The rideshare driver left. 

“What if he’s fucking his sister?” Ancel said, standing in the driveway.

Berenger sighed. “Ancel.”

“The way he looks at her--if I didn’t know she was his sister, I would think ‘lover’, not ‘sister.’”

“Do you want to quit?” Berenger said.

Ancel turned toward him at the non sequitur.

“Are you looking for excuses to stop working for Auguste? Because you don’t need one. If you don’t want to work, that’s fine. Or if you want to quit and look for another job, or quit and--” Berenger seemed to be looking for ideas “--redecorate the house, or--”

Ancel stepped in closer to his lover. This was how close Auguste had been to his sister, he thought. He kissed Berenger softly. “You’re so sweet to me.”

“It’d be nice if you gave extended notice,” said Berenger. “Auguste will struggle to replace you.”

“Of course he would,” said Ancel. “But who said anything about quitting. I am just pointing out the undeniable fact that a mutual acquaintance of ours happens to be fucking his sister.”

“Undeniable fact?” Berenger echoed skeptically.

“Let’s go to bed,” Ancel said, turning toward the house.

A few weeks later, Ancel called Auguste on a Saturday morning. “Lazar finished the proposal.”

“He’d have better,” said Auguste.

“We have to ship it today if it’s going to arrive Monday; I need your signature.”

“Can’t you fake it?” said Auguste.

Ancel could, but that was hardly the point. “I’m coming by your place; I’ll be there in three minutes.”

Auguste’s condo was nice--at least a few million, Ancel figured--but he must hang on to it for sentimental reasons, because he could do so much better. The doorman let Ancel in the elevator, and then he buzzed at the door, and after a minute, Auguste came to the door.

Ancel stared for a moment.

Auguste seemed obviously post coital. His hair was messy; he was shirtless and only wearing sweatpants. His chest was amazing. Ancel sometimes wondered if it could possibly be worth working out as much as Ancel and Damen seemed to, but he was reconsidering now, staring at Auguste’s chest.

“Is it safe?” said Ancel. “Where’s that rat thing?” He hated dogs.

“I shut Nicaise in the workout room,” said Auguste.

Well, that ruled out him being shirtless because he was working out. 

Ancel handed Auguste a pen. Auguste bent over a table in his front hall, leaning one hand on the table while he signed with the other hand. Ancel admired his shoulder definition as he did that. 

Auguste handed back the pen. Ancel took it, and tucked it in his bag, and then took the folder of papers, and tucked those in his bag as well.

Ancel nodded his head back toward Auguste’s bedroom. “Was I interrupting something?”

Auguste smiled, knowingly. “You know,” he said, “I should probably let Nicaise out of the workout room--”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” said Ancel.

He hadn’t really even been suspicious. You go to a guy’s house on a Saturday morning, he looks like he’s been having sex and he put the dog in the workout room, you assume he’s fucking his husband. It was just the natural assumption to make. 

Ancel didn’t question it until he stopped by The Summer Palace afterward to pick up the eclair that Berenger had asked for and ran into Damen behind the counter. He’d already gone as far as Auguste’s place, and The Summer Palace was just a couple blocks away.

“Hi Ancel,” Damen said, smiling at him.

“You’re here,” said Ancel, surprised.

“It is my bakery,” Damen agreed, still smiling. “What can I get you? I have Berenger’s favorite eclairs?”

Ancel was still putting things together in his head. If Damen was here, then that meant that he was definitely not back at Auguste’s place in the bedroom, which meant that there was someone else back at Auguste’s place in the bedroom.

Ancel nodded slowly. “I’ll take a box of the eclairs, but not that one,” he pointed at one in the case. “The frosting is a little weird on that one.”

Damen nodded understandingly and boxed up the pastries. Ancel’s mind was still back in Auguste’s bedroom. He could hear Berenger’s voice in his head. It’s none of your business, Ancel. It’s none of your business, Ancel. Don’t poke your nose where it--

“Hey, is Laurent visiting this weekend?” Ancel said.

“Yeah,” Damen agreed happily. “She flew back last night.”

Ancel pasted on a smile. “That must be fun. You must miss her when she’s away.”

Damen nodded, ringing up the eclairs and taking Ancel’s card. “She doesn’t admit it,” he said, “But I think she gets homesick at school, too.”

Ancel nodded agreeably. Homesick. Right. That was what they called it. 

“Enjoy your eclairs!” Damen said, as the bell on the door jingled as Ancel left with the box. 

Ancel walked to the shipping shop up two blocks. Wow. He’d--been right. He had told Berenger he was, but he hadn’t completely believed it himself. Auguste was banging his sister. 

At the shipping shop, he turned over the envelope of signed papers and paid for next day delivery and took his receipt, mind elsewhere. Ancel supposed Damen had to be fucking her also, to explain the first pieces of evidence that he’d found.

Ancel waited for his rideshare to show up and thought about it. 

Were they all three of them, together? Or did they have some kind of elaborate sharing arrangement? Or was Laurent involved in the longest long-con ever, and somehow was living with two men who each didn’t know the other was fucking her. 

If there was anyone who could pull that off, Ancel would have to believe it was Laurent. Auguste’s sister was devious. And he could kind of see Damen falling for it. But he would have thought Auguste would be a bit harder to play. 

Ancel’s ride pulled up, and he got in. 

How long had this been going on, Ancel thought. When did it start? Was there just some random point around year two of married life where Auguste said, “Hey, I’m kind of into my sister,” and Damen said, “Cool, but only if you share.” Or was it before they’d been married? 

Was the marriage even real? Ancel knew it was legal, he’d seen the paperwork, but were Damen and Auguste even together? What if they didn’t even fuck each other? What if they were just married because it made it more convenient for both of them since they each wanted to fuck the same woman!

Ancel thought about how Auguste had always insisted he wasn’t gay.

Wow, Ancel thought. Straight men were really the worst! Imagine faking being gay married just to fuck your sister. Except he still couldn’t really believe Auguste was straight. He thought again of Auguste’s chest that morning, and of Damen bending over to take eclairs out of the case at the bakery. If they were straight, it was really a tragedy.

That couldn’t be right, Ancel thought. He remembered the sweet way they kissed at their wedding--that was hard to fake. He’d seen the two of them standing close together at the end of a long evening, leaning on each other in a way that spoke of intimacy. Straight guys weren’t that good at acting. They’d been drinking at the end of one evening, and Ancel remembered Damen nuzzling a bit at Auguste’s neck and Auguste smiling smugly. Straight guys didn’t do that. Especially not ones as bad at lying as Damen. 

This was a lot to think about, and Ancel had a rideshare driver who wanted to make conversation. “I can’t talk right now, I’m thinking,” he said, which was probably going to lower his rating as a rider, but he had much bigger things on his mind.

Back at the house, he set the eclairs on the breakfast bar. Berenger was making coffee and had prepared some for Ancel the way he liked it, which was to fill the cup with enough sugar-free, dairy-free creamer that it kind of tasted like cake. 

“Morning,” Berenger said, kissing Ancel’s cheek and handing over the mug of coffee. “Finish everything up at work you needed to?”

Ancel put his full attention on his husband. “Yes,” he said. “Sorry to spoil our weekend with a bit of work.”

“It’s no bother,” said Berenger. “I tended to the horses.”

If only it were possible to shut the horses in the workout room, Ancel thought. 

Ancel sipped his coffee and Berenger ate one of the eclairs. A bit of frosting escaped the eclair and ended up on the tip of his nose. Ancel smiled, then wiped it away and leaned in to kiss Berenger, chasing the frosting on his lips. 

“You seem distracted,” said Berenger. “More work stuff?”

“Yes,” said Ancel. “It’s terrible. Distract me from it?” he batted his eyelashes, and Berenger was agreeable about being led upstairs for a late-morning siesta.

The funny thing was, knowing didn’t really change much. Ancel thought about it--he thought about it a lot. But it didn’t change anything. Ancel thought about it when Auguste mentioned Damen, or when he mentioned Laurent, or when he talked about something gay or something that seemed vaguely straight. Auguste brought Damen to a client dinner, and Ancel watched the way that Auguste stared at Damen and rested his hand on Damen’s forearm and how each of their rings glistened in the low light of the restaurant, and he thought--they have to be fucking each other.

He might have had too many martinis, and so he told Berenger this on the way home. 

“I definitely think Auguste and Damen are doing it.”

Berenger, who was ridiculous in all ways and managed to make a single drink last all night, laughed. “You think so?” he said, humoring Ancel.

“Yes,” Ancel agreed seriously.

“What gave it away?” said Berenger. “That they’ve been married for more than five years?”

“No, it was how Auguste put his hand on Damen’s arm,” Ancel said. 

Berenger resumed the conversation when they were at home. “Tell me about this arm touch. Show me it.”

“It was kind of like--” Ancel had to get into character if he was going to be Auguste. He tied his hair back and put on his most arrogant expression. Then, he reached out a hand slowly and rested it on Berenger’s forearm.

Berenger swallowed. “And that means we’re fucking?”

Ancel looked into his eyes. “It means I’m going to bend you over the couch because it’s not even worth walking up the stairs--”

Auguste’s place didn’t have stairs, so the role play fell apart somewhere, but no one was complaining.

Over the winter holidays that year, Auguste went to some fancy resort in Tahiti or something. He wasn’t actually very specific about his destination, except that it was extremely far away and involved a beach and no internet so he was absolutely not doing any work.

“Is Damen going?” Ancel asked, because he couldn’t control himself. 

Auguste nodded distractedly. 

“What’s Laurent doing for the holiday?” Ancel asked, trying to sound disinterested and like he was just making polite conversation.

“She loves the beach,” said Auguste.

“Oh, is she going along also?”

“I planned it for her break between semesters,” said Auguste.

“Oh,” said Ancel. “Like a family vacation!”

Auguste blinked at him. “Right.”

So anyway, that was suspicious, but it was no more so than anything else Auguste did nowadays.

Auguste sometimes had Ancel arrange his personal travel, but he hadn’t asked for help for the trip to Tahiti, which mean that Ancel didn’t have an opportunity to extensively check out the resort or whatever online and try to stalk their social media while Auguste was there for random pictures or whatever.

Whatever. Ancel had his own holiday to do. He’d done up the house--he’d gotten a new tree this year, because he wanted one that was a bit--taller and skinnier--and he and Berenger were going to host Colette and her spawn for Christmas and Berenger was trying to win some kind of “best uncle” award because he was going to literally give the spawn a pony. Like, an actual pony. Ancel had seen it in the stables.

“Where will they keep it!” Ancel said.

“Well, here, of course,” said Berenger.

Ancel gave the stablehand a huge bonus for Christmas. The poor man was going to need it.


	8. Chapter 8

The real reveal about Tahiti happened after Christmas, and even after Auguste had returned. He’d texted Ancel that he was back in the country and would see him the next day at work. 

Ancel checked his work email and was deleting spam when an email caught his eye.

Auguste had probably not realized that one of his hotel membership accounts had Ancel’s email attached to it, since Ancel had set up the hotel membership account and added his membership number to his work reservations so he earned points and free nights. 

It also meant that the resort in Tahiti had emailed him. “Dear Mr. DeVere,” the email read. “Thank you for your recent stay at our property. We hope you enjoyed your retreat. Please enjoy the following photographs courtesy of the hotel photographer.”

Ancel’s eyes widened. There were ten attachments to the email. 

He opened the first one. 

It was a beautiful photograph, both in the composition and the subject. The photographer had Laurent posing in a light blue dress on the sand in front of the darker blue green of the ocean. Her dress and her hair fluttered in the wind off to her left. She was smiling and looking at the camera with a slightly sultry expression. 

Ancel admired it for a moment, guessed at the designer of Laurent’s dress, wished he was off at the beach wearing a strapless dress in the sun instead of stuck in the snow, and then opened the second picture. 

The second photo was of Damen and Auguste together.

They didn’t seem aware of the photographer, who had caught them from behind, two silhouettes against the backdrop of the sun setting over the ocean. 

They were standing next to each other, their hands resting on a railing and facing out toward the ocean, but they were looking at each other, and there was no doubt in Ancel’s mind that they way they were looking at each other was the way men who were deeply in love looked at each other.

They both looked like models, tall men with broad shoulders and trim waists. Damen’s hair was trimmed short and a little wind-tousled, and Auguste’s was tied messily at his nape. Damen was grinning at Auguste; Auguste’s answering expression was a small smirk. 

The third picture looked as though it were taken a moment later, because Damen and Auguste were pictured again and in the same location and the same clothes, just leaning in toward each other a fraction closer so that their lips met. 

Their eyes were closed. The setting sun glistened off of Damen’s gold watch. 

The fourth picture was a bit different. The three of them were on the beach; the photographer had taken the shot from a distance. They were swimming. Damen and Auguste wore swim trunks and Laurent had on a bikini. 

Damen was standing in the shallows, and Laurent looked like she had just leapt up onto his back like a monkey, her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs around his waist. Damen was laughing, Laurent’s mouth was open like she was shouting triumphantly.

Auguste was smiling, looking at the two of them from a couple feet away. He looked fond and amused by the antics of the other two. 

In the fifth picture they were swimming deeper in the water, and the photo just showed three heads close together out in the water. 

Laurent wasn’t as tall as the other two, Ancel thought, but her head was the same height. She was treading water, perhaps, or she was close enough to Damen that she might be balanced on his back still like a monkey.

He clicked open the sixth photo, and Damen and Laurent were dancing. They were on a small dance floor in what looked like an outdoor bar, a palm tree in the background. Damen was dipping Laurent in the picture, and her head tipped back and her hair fell in a blonde waterfall. Auguste sat off to the side of the picture, watching the dancing pair with a small smile. 

It was reasonable for your husband and your sister to dance, Ancel supposed, if you weren’t inclined personally and they enjoyed the music. 

Ancel’s hopes of finding something particularly juicy in the photographs was fading as they seemed to be reasonable pictures of his boss and his family on vacation. Good photos, of course, but ones that Auguste could frame and put on his desk at work.

The seventh photo was still on the dance floor, though it was a narrower shot, only showing Damen and Laurent. They were slow dancing, it seemed. Laurent was pressed close to Damen’s chest, her cheek resting against his shoulder. She had one hand spread on his chest lightly, he had an arm around her and a hand on her waist, and another hand resting on top of hers on his chest. He was resting his cheek on the top of her head. 

It was a deeply romantic picture. 

Ancel stared at it. Was there an innocent way to understand it?

Maybe they had been dancing and Laurent was tired, and she just leaned against Damen for a moment, and Damen was just holding her like a polite dancing partner would.

It didn’t do justice to their facial expressions, though, and as Ancel looked at the photo longer, he noticed the position of their legs, and the way that one of Damen’s thighs was slid in between Laurent’s. That was--not the type of position that someone would take with their husband’s sister, if they were being polite. It was the type of position that spoke of familiarity, and intimacy, and sex, and of wanting to spend more time in between the thighs later.

Well, Ancel told himself, he had suspected as much. And if the photos showed that Auguste was content enough to watch his husband and his sister dance as close as lovers, it was proof that he was probably watching them as lovers, too. 

The eighth picture showed the three of them leaving the patio where they'd been dancing, walking across the sand. The picture showed them from behind. Damen had Laurent swept up in a bridal carry. Her arms were around his neck and her hair spilled over his arm. Auguste was next to Damen, a hand on Damen’s lower back and his other hand holding what looked like Laurent’s sandals. 

In the background of the photo, there was a a resort building. I twas the kind of resort where each suite was its own beach house, and Ancel could picture the three of them walking off to their own private suite. They were probably sharing one suite; the suite probably had one enormous bed. Damen would toss Laurent onto it when they got there, laughing--or was he the type of lay Laurent down gently and crawl on top of her smoothly? Did Auguste watch? Did he usually watch? 

After a long moment, Ancel opened the ninth picture. It was of a pool. In the front of the picture, a set of swim trunks and the two pieces of a bikini rested on the tiles next to the edge of the pool. On the other side of the picture, and the other side of the pool, there were two heads showing out of the clear blue water, and a blur of pink skin beneath the surface. 

Auguste’s back was visible. He was facing the far edge of the pool and the horizon, away from the photographer, and his hands were resting on the edge of the pool, one on either side of Laurent.

Laurent’s hands were also on the edge of the pool and she was also facing out at the horizon. She was leaning back against Auguste in the picture, her head tipped slightly back on his shoulder. They were in a very close embrace.

They looked like lovers, enjoying a romantic moment while swimming, if you ignored the fact that the silhouette of their faces against the horizon was the same, with the same bridge of their noses and curve of their chins.

It was a compromising picture for siblings even if they’d been wearing bathing suits. The presence of their swimsuits on the ground outside the pool made it impossible. They were embracing, naked. 

Ancel bit his lip. He’d known it, and yet seeing it was still shocking. He might have been a bit scandalized to see his tight-laced boss embracing anyone naked, even if it had been his husband. Ancel imagined that for a moment, picturing Damen in Laurent’s place in the picture. It was a nice mental image, but it was still a bit scandalous. When it was not his boss’s husband and was actually his boss’s sister, it was unbelievable. 

Ancel squinted at the picture and tried to blow it up larger on the screen. Were they actually fucking in the picture?

He couldn’t tell through the water, and it was hard to determine from the position of their bodies together.

“Ancel?” Berenger called from the other room. “Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute,” Ancel replied. 

He opened the last photograph.

His breath caught.

He couldn’t believe the hotel photographer had even dared.

The photograph only avoided being completely obscene by the fact that Laurent was draped over the top of Damen and Auguste and covering the important bits. The three of them were naked and asleep on an outdoor lounger. 

Laurent was lying on her stomach with her head resting on Damen’s chest and her legs tangled with Auguste’s. Damen had a hand on Auguste’s shoulder. Auguste was resting a hand on Laurent’s thigh. Their eyes were closed and their skin was tanned.

There was a ridiculous amount of skin to look at. Damen and Auguste’s bare chests were impressive enough, and completely on display, not to mention their shoulders and long lean arms and legs. Laurent was lean as well, less muscular than the men, but lithe and her skin slightly more pale than Auguste’s. Her ass was obvious in the picture, rounded. She was twisted and her legs were together, so nothing exceptionally dirty was obvious in the photo, though there was a shadow on her thigh--was that a bruise? It was right next to where Auguste’s hand was resting. He couldn’t tell if it was a shadow or a bruise, but in either case Ancel was fairly confident Auguste was responsible. 

Ancel swore.

He checked the time, then checked online for a time zone calculation, and then he called the resort phone number in the email signature.

After he cleared that up, he hit “print” and went to find Berenger reading in bed. 

Ancel kissed Berenger. “I’m sorry. I have to go do a thing.”

Berenger took off his glasses. “A thing?”

“I need to go talk to Auguste.”

Berenger looked concerned. “Is something wrong at work?”

Ancel shook his head. “No, I just have to talk to him right away. I’ll be back? Don’t wait up for me.”

“Okay,” Berenger said. Ancel kissed the faint frown line on his forehead again and left.

It was late by the time he made it to Auguste’s building. He wasn’t on a list, so he was stopped at the front desk, and then when they called up to Auguste, Auguste didn’t just say “send him in,” Auguste said, “Fine, I’ll come down.”

Ancel waited, holding the folder of printouts.

The elevator door dinged, and then opened. Auguste came out. He had dressed quickly, Ancel guessed, because his shirt wasn’t fully tucked in in the back and it didn’t look like he was wearing socks in his casual loafers. It was probably driving him nuts.

“What’s going on?” said Auguste. “Why didn’t you just call?”

“I needed to see you,” said Ancel. “We have to talk.”

“About what?” said Auguste. 

Ancel eyed the doorman and the person working the front desk of the building. “We need to talk privately.”

“Why?” said Auguste.

“Would I jerk you around?” said Ancel.

Auguste stared at him for a minute, then took out his phone, messaged someone, and then turned back around toward the elevator, gesturing for Ancel to follow him. 

They rode the elevator silently. Auguste kept glancing over at Ancel. Ancel stared at the elevator doors, waiting for them to open.

The doors opened.

Ancel exited first, and then walked over next to the door to Auguste’s condo. He waited for Auguste, who walked out of the elevator more slowly.

Auguste unlocked the door slowly, and walked in first. Ancel followed. The door shut behind him. Auguste shucked his shoes off, and he was barefoot without them.

The door to Auguste’s condo opened into a small entryway, with a rack for coats and a dish for keys and a set of low shelves where Damen and Auguste and Laurent’s shoes were neatly stacked. 

Beyond the entryway was their living area and a hallway to the bedrooms and the workout room. Ancel glanced toward the living area. He could see Damen walking across the living room, shirtless and barefoot wearing sweatpants only. On the couch, Laurent’s head and a bare arm and shoulder extended over the top of a blanket, and as Ancel glanced, Damen adjusted the blanket, pulling it up further to better cover Laurent.

Auguste hustled Ancel down the hallway and put his hand on the door to the workout room. 

“Wait,” said Ancel. “Is your rat-dog in there?”

“Get in,” Auguste said, opening the door. 

The dog was nowhere in sight, and Auguste’s workout room smelled nothing like most gyms usually smelled, so Ancel walked in. 

“Why are you here?” said Auguste. “What’s wrong?”

Ancel took a deep breath and opened the folder he’d brought along. 

“The resort you were at took these pictures,” he said. “I sort of figured you’d appreciate it if I didn’t bring them to the office.” He handed the stack of photos to Auguste.

Auguste’s eyes had gone huge at “the resort” and stayed shocked as he took the stack quietly. It wasn’t his usual fake-innocent wide eyes. Ancel knew Auguste’s “I have no idea what happened to all of the post-its, Ancel” wide eyes, and the more genuine, “Oh this turkey wrap is much better than usual, Ancel” wide eyes, and all of the other variants that appeared fairly regularly. If Ancel had to describe this particular wide-eyed expression, he’d call it “abject terror.”

Auguste looked down at the photos. “What is--” his voice was weak.

“You know what it is,” Ancel said.

Auguste glanced up at Ancel and then back down at the photos he was holding.

They had printed in the order they’d been attached to the email. Auguste flipped through them slowly: one - Laurent in the blue dress, two - Damen and Auguste in front of the sunset, three - Damen and Auguste kissing, four - the shallow-water roughhousing, five - the deeper water swimming, six - Damen dipping Laurent while Auguste watched, seven - Damen and Laurent slow dancing, eight - Auguste and Damen carrying Laurent off to one of the resort suites.

Auguste swallowed hard, looking at Damen carrying Laurent across the sand, and glanced up at Ancel.

Ancel raised an eyebrow, like, go on.

Auguste was very pale, beneath his tan from Tahiti. He flipped to the ninth picture, with the swimsuits in the foreground and Auguste and Laurent swimming in the distance.

“It isn’t what it looks like,” Auguste tried. His voice broke while he said it.

“Don’t lie to me,” Ancel said.

Auguste flipped to the tenth picture. He swore, quietly.

“Ancel, they can’t have these pictures,” he said.

“I already called the resort and very politely but firmly insisted on them being deleted.”

Auguste pressed his hand to his face. “I--okay--what do you want?”

That didn’t make sense.

“Money?” Auguste continued. “How much?”

“What?” said Ancel.

Auguste was still clutching the pictures with one hand. “What do you want to pretend you never saw--”

“This isn’t some kind of blackmail scheme, you asshole,” said Ancel.

Auguste blinked.

“I already knew,” Ancel said.

Auguste blinked again. 

“I just want you to stop lying to me so that I can fucking help you. This wouldn’t have even happened if you’d let me make the arrangements.”

“You already knew,” Auguste said, slowly.

“Just,” said Ancel, “you and Damen are actually fucking, right? Someone should be tapping that ass--”

Auguste swore again, and he lowered his hand from his face, and his eyes were actually wet.

That was--new. Ancel hadn’t managed to make his boss cry before. It felt wrong.

“This is fine,” said Ancel. “The resort deleted the pictures. I have electronic copies but I can delete them right now if you want, I just didn’t know if you wanted them--” Ancel held up his phone, his thumb poised over “delete email”. “You and Damen have way more subtlety than I ever would have guessed; I don’t think your husband has managed to give you away to anyone besides me. And now that you’re going to stop lying to me, I can make this easier for you.”

“I--” Auguste’s voice cracked. “I have to lie to everyone, Ancel. No one can know--”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Ancel said. “And I already lie to everyone else about you.”

Auguste managed a weak half-smile.

“I tell them you’re not completely batshit insane, don’t I?” said Ancel. “See.”

Auguste took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He looked down at the picture on top again. It was still the one of the three of them asleep. “We have to be more careful,” he said.

Ancel waved a hand. “Did you have a good time in Tahiti?”

Auguste looked at him. “Yeah.” His voice was wry.

“Then it’s fine. Do you want the pictures?”

Auguste closed his eyes for a long moment. “I do, yeah.”

“Electronic?”

“Yeah--but can we encrypt them or something?” Auguste said.

“I’d have to google how to do that,” Ancel said. He didn’t bother encrypting the pictures he had of shirtless Berenger on his own phone, and Berenger was too shy to pose for anything dirtier. If someone found all the nude selfies Ancel had taken, Ancel kind of felt like they deserved it. Some of them were very artistic.

“Laurent would know how to do it,” Auguste said. 

“She’s kind of naked and asleep in your living room.”

Auguste swore again. 

“Maybe you should get a bigger place, so you have more space to fuck that isn’t in view of your front door.”

Auguste sighed. “Maybe you should call before you stop by.”

When Ancel got home, Berenger was asleep. He roused slightly as Ancel climbed into bed. 

“Everything okay?” Berenger said.

“Never better,” Ancel said, snuggling in behind him.

The next morning at work, Auguste was tanned and should have been relaxed and in a great mood from his trip. Instead, he was quiet and reserved. He didn’t chit chat at Ancel’s desk, and sent Ancel paperwork to deal with over email. 

But that was okay. Days passed, and Auguste began to relax again.

A few months later, Laurent went along with Auguste on a trip to London, and Ancel booked them two hotel rooms and flight seats right next to each other. 

And at the end of the year, he suggested to Berenger, “Let’s have Auguste over for dinner.”

“Sure,” Berenger agreed. “Do you want to invite any of the other partners?”

“Nah,” Ancel said. “But let’s invite Damen and Laurent.”

Berenger eyed him. “I’m going to show Laurent the horses.”

Of course he was.

And he did.

But it was fine. Auguste and Damen and Laurent were, objectively, basically the same as they’d always been. They were all unreasonably beautiful and well dressed and polite in the high-bred way (Auguste, Laurent) or natural charm way (Damen). They were friendly to Berenger and comfortable with each other.

Ancel felt that he saw more than ever before. The way Auguste adjusted Damen’s collar screamed of his affection. Damen and Laurent had matching watches that Auguste liked to check, lifting their wrists to glance at the time. Laurent danced with Damen when Berenger put on some music, and she leaned against her brother comfortably on the couch afterward. 

At the end of the evening, Ancel started to give each of them back their coats. Auguste was the last to leave, and after he put his coat on, he took Ancel’s hand and held it. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”


End file.
